Excel Accountant: Auditing Excel Workbooks

Learning Objectives

• To recall the location of the menu command that allows you to determine categorically if a workbook contains links or not.
• To define how to transform cell references into range names. State the location of the Enable Iterative Calculations setting within the Excel Options dialog box.
• To implement the Watch Window to monitor the ramifications of even minor changes to your workbooks.
• To explore automatic versus manual calculation in Excel.
• To recognize and trace dependents, precedents, and circular references in MS Excel.

Course Description

Learn from Excel expert David Ringstrom, CPA, valuable techniques that can be used to verify the integrity of even the most complicated Excel spreadsheets. In this comprehensive course, David shows you how to use Excel’s formula auditing and error-checking tools, identify duplicates in a list, monitor the ramifications of even minor changes made to your workbooks, use the Evaluate Formula feature, and much more.

David demonstrates every technique at least twice: first, on a PowerPoint slide with numbered steps, and second, in the subscription-based Office 365 version of Excel. David draws your attention to any differences in the older versions of Excel (2019, 2016, 2013, and earlier) during the presentation as well as in his detailed handouts. David also provides an Excel workbook that includes most of the examples he uses during the webcast.

Office 365 is a subscription-based product that provides new feature updates as often as monthly. Conversely, the perpetual licensed versions of Excel have feature sets that don’t change. Perpetual licensed versions have year numbers, such as Excel 2019, Excel 2016, and so on.

This Online CPE/CE Webinar on Excel covers the following Major Topics:

• Identifying duplicates in a list using Conditional Formatting.
• Select all formulas within a worksheet with just two mouse clicks.
• Adding a macro to Excel that adds the ability to display any formula in a cell comment.
• Exploring options for recovering lost passwords for Excel spreadsheets.
• Protecting sensitive information by marking key worksheets as Very Hidden.
• Transforming cell references into range names by way of the Apply Range Names to Formulas command.
• Differentiating between manual and automatic calculation modes in Excel, and when Excel may default to manual calculation mode.
• Understanding the purpose and nuances of Excel’s Personal Macro Workbook.
• Bringing Excel’s green error-checking prompts under control by managing the underlying rules.
• Learning the nuances of circular references in Excel.
• Adding a macro to Excel that adds the ability to display any formula in a cell comment.

Overview

• Recovering Lost Passwords

  3 mins
• Unhide Very Hidden Worksheet

  6 mins
• Confirming If a File Has Links

  11 mins
• Automatic vs. Manual Calculation

  15 mins
• Find & Select - Constants

  23 mins
• Trace Precedents

  30 mins
• Create Range Names from Selection

  48 mins
• Auditing Contents of Named Cells

  54 mins
• N Function

  64 mins
• Manage Error Checking Prompts

  86 mins
• Locating Circular References

  97 mins