Do you happen to work for a firm that is a little, well, shall we say, fixated in terms of it's requirements when it comes to formatting.

(Of course you do. Who doesn't? And we would have liked to use a much stronger word than fixated, but we'll let that pass for the moment)

And so you have, of course, experienced many moments of nirvana when you've gone about changing the default colors that Excel loads its charts with to the colors that your firm insists are the only ones worth showing on a chart. And of the many pointless activities that one is forced to do in office, this changing of colors is the one that usually gets my goat.

Which made me wonder about ways and mean to un-get my goat - and this Excel tutorial is about the results that followed.

Now in order to explain exactly what the problem is, let's just come up with a default chart.

Simple enough data, right? Well, now we need to go and create a simple Clustered Column chart out of this data - which also is simple enough.

Now, here lies the problem. Let's say you happen to work for a firm that insists that the blue must really be a shade of green that is not a default color within Excel, and the red must be yet another shade of green that is also not a default shade within Excel.

Which involves right clicking on the data series, going to Fill Color, and writing in the exact RGB values.

And if you don't know what I'm talking about - you are truly blessed!

Now, doing this for every chart, every time, is an inconvenience that is truly monumental. Wouldn't the world be a much better place if we could somehow have the chart load up in those default colours right away?

And since we at Excel Everest believe in happy endings, rest assured that the world is, indeed, a better place.

Simply go to Page Layout and choose Colours. Choose the theme that you have customized to suit your needs (more on how to do this in a couple of minutes). Click OK, and heave a huge sigh of relief!

As you can see, I have created a customized template called the CIG template, suited to the requirements of a firm where I do some consulting work. This automatically changes the colors of the chart to those that are mandated by my client - and it does this for every chart within the file as soon as I choose this color template.

Now comes the million dollar question: how do I go about doing this?

Well, right at the bottom of the options (below Office, Grayscale, Apex and so on) is an option called "Create New Theme Colors" - click on it, and a new window pops up:

It's fairly self-explanatory - modify it as per your requirements, and you're ready to go!

Simplicity itself, isn't it?!

If you've got any tweaks of your own when it comes to default colors, fonts and styles, do let us know!

Tips, Tricks, and Insights

Um, that is not a facetious question. In point of fact, Excel actually can do your math homework. Or rather, and let's be frank here, it can help you check very quickly indeed if your child has doing her sums correctly.

And for most parents the world over, that is a godsend - while we would be very glad indeed if the kids were doign their homework correctly, ensuring this usually means having to solve all those problems yourself. And racking your brains over high-school algebra is the last thing you want to be doing at 7 p.m. on a rotten Wednesday evening.

Leave it all to Excel!

In this, the first part of what may well turn out to be a multi-part series, we'll explain how to solve two fairly simple problems in beginner's math: GCD and LCM.

Sounds vaguely and disturbingly familiar, don't they?

GCD is the Greatest Common Divisor, while LCM is the Least Common Multiple. In other words, GCD simply checks which is the biggest number that can divide into both (or all) of the numbers given, while LCM checks which is the smallest number that both (or all) of the given numbers can divide into.

Take the numbers 10 and 15, for example. The biggest number that is a common divisor of both is, of course 5. That's the GCD. And the smallest multiple for both of them is, of course, 30. That's the LCM.

There - now that we have successfully dispensed with the explanation, let's go ahead and try and figure out how to solve math homework using Excel: Episode 1.

Let's say you have been given three numbers (or rather, your kid has been given three numbers) 16, 22, 56. How does one find out the LCM?

Well, simplicity itself:

It's that simple, I tell you.

And that's the answer, right there:

DOing this without Excel might have taken you some time, but now - well, you'd hardly blame your kid if she thought you the cleverst parent alive, now would you?

And if you want to impress her further, just tweak the formula a bit to let her know of the GCD as well. That'll show the young 'uns that you've still got it, eh?

And there you have it: two (very simple) formulas that don't take more than a couple of minutes to make you look like The Coolest Parent Ever.

And what better feeling is there to have, pray?

We're all Excel addicts over here, make no mistake. Much as we like to poke fun at the green monster, we simply couldn't imagine being even remotely productive in office without those friendly cells staring back at us from the screen.

And if you, dear reader, are anything like us, we share a common trait. It saves us a lot of time, to be sure, but it can also be downright frustrating at times. I speak of, of course, our mutual loathing for mice.

I don't mean the squeaky real-life variety (although I don't mind admitting that I'm not the biggest fan in this case either), but the ones that move the cursor around on the screen. For a professional Excel user, lifting one's fingers off the keyboard in order to use the mouse while working on Excel is nothing short of anathema. Just not done.

And as I was saying, it works well enough most of the time. THis Excel tutorial is about one of the few times that it... didn't.

Have you ever had to auto-fill a series? Write 1,2,3 in a column and then autofill the remaining numbers up until 20? Of course you have had to - who hasn't?

And therefore, you also know how to go about doing it, right? Fill in a couple of seed values, select them, and point your mouse at the lower right corner, right where that extra little bulge is present, and then drag for as long as you like - yadda-yadda-yadda.

Ah, but the question-du-jour, obviously, is: how do you do this using your keyboard? And the answer had us stumped for a long, long time. An online search threw up not-very-convincing answers and it seemed as if we were going to have to use the mouse in this case, like it or not.

Ah, but never fear. Us intrepid Excel Everest explorers will stop at nothing to dig up an answer - even if it means accomplishing nothing else in our work day.

Presenting, therefore, the keyboard shortcut that comes to our rescue today:

ALT+H+F+I+S

Here's how it works... let's say you want it to extend 1,2,3 (shown above) to 10.

So, in the first instance, select the seed values, and extend the series out as long as you like.

Now hit the keys in the order shown above: ALT-H-F-I-S

A new pop-up box appears:

In which one simply needs to enter the incremental or step value, and the stop value - that is the value up until which point you want the series extended. Of course, it goes without saying that autofill works for ordinary series such as the one we have talked about here, or growth series, or date formats... or what have you - all can be completed using the keyboard shortcut we have spoek about here.

And there, that's it. Painfully obvious once you get the hang of it, of course, but for us addicts, a major problem solved!

Have any keyboard shortcuts of your own that you think the world doesn't know about? Share 'em with us!

Tips, Tricks, and Insights

... that is the question.

And the answer might surprise you more than a little.

Merging cells is something we do quite often, and for very good reasons. When the text is deomstrably larger than a single cell, it often makes sense for aesthetic purposes to try and fit it, or merge it, across multiple cells.

Except there's one rather large, inconvenient problem. Merging cells can be quite problematic, since any subsequent formatting must of necessity account for these merged cells. Formatting borders, filling colors, or even simple shifting of merged cells can throw up error messages that are time consuming to solve at best, and supremely frustrating at worst.

That's the bad news.

The good news is that there is a percfectly acceptable solution. The only caveat being the fact that it is hidden away, deep within Excel's darkest recesses. In true, time honored Microsoft tradition, it reveals itself only to the most determined researcher, and that after many hours of clicking around. But for you, dear reader, there's a shortcut to nirvana: read on!

Here's what you need to do:

Select the text that you need to fit into a single cell:

Move your mouse over to the "Font" section on the Home tab:

Click on the little arrow that is (barely) visible towards the bottom right of that box.

The "Format Cells" pop-up box should materialize  - make sure you choose the "Alignment" tab.

Under the Text Alignment section, for the Horizontal drop-down box, choose "Center Across Selection"

And it's as simple as that!

It looks for all the world as if the cells have been merged, but in reality, all that has happened is that the text has literally been centered across that seelction, with the intervening borders removed.

Works like a charm, and is much more convenient than merging cells.

Now, if we could only figure out just why it's hidden away in that little niche...