Implementing Excel Spreadsheet Internal Controls (Completed)

In this empowering webcast, Excel expert David Ringstrom, CPA, demonstrates how to use internal control features within your Excel spreadsheets. Using a simple invoice form as a teaching aid, he shares several ways you can control users’ actions within spreadsheets, and how you can protect worksheets and workbooks from unauthorized changes.

In addition, he goes into detail about the IFNA, IFERROR, and ISERROR functions; the VLOOKUP function; the SUMIF function; the Data Validation feature; the Conditional Formatting feature; and hide and protect features.

For this presentation, David demonstrates techniques from the version of Excel used by the majority of attendees. Typically, this means he teaches from Excel 2010 or 2013, but his handouts identify differences in Excel 2007, 2010, 2013, and 2016 when needed. His webcasts are fast-paced, and attendees often are surprised at the amount of ground he covers in a session. He welcomes participants’ questions, so come ready to pick his brain. David’s detailed handouts, with numbered steps, serve as reference material you can utilize going forward. He also provides an Excel workbook that includes most of the examples he uses during the webcast.

Who Should Attend
Practitioners seeking to simplify data entry, as well as those who develop spreadsheets for others to use and want to learn how they can prevent unauthorized changes.

Topics Covered

• Compare and contrast IFNA, IFERROR, and ISERROR functions and learn which versions of Excel support these worksheet functions
• Create an in-cell list by way of Excel's Data Validation feature
• Create resilient SUM functions that won't break when users insert additional rows
• Ensure proper VLOOKUP integrity by using Data Validation to create an in-cell drop-down list
• Go behind the scenes in a workbook to check for worksheets that can't be viewed or hidden from Excel's primary user interface
• Improve the integrity of spreadsheets with Excel's VLOOKUP function
• Make it harder for a user to circumvent data validation and easy for you to identify when someone has attempted to do so
• Overcome VLOOKUP's quirks by using SUMIF to look-up numeric values
• Preserve key formulas using hide and protect features
• See how Excel's Table feature can minimize ongoing spreadsheet maintenance
• Toggle the Locked status of a worksheet cell on or off by way of a custom shortcut
• Use a custom number format to hide zero amounts within a specific area of a spreadsheet
• Use Conditional Formatting to color-code your data, identify duplicates, and apply icons
• Use Data Validation to create a rule that ensures dates entered within a cell are greater than or equal to today's date
• Use Excel's VLOOKUP function to look up an item description based on an input provided by the user
• Utilize Data Validation to limit percentages entered in a cell to a specific range of values

Learning Objectives

• Recognize and apply lookup formulas to find and access data automatically from lists
• Identify how hide and protect features can be used to preserve key formulas
• Describe how to use Excel's Data Validation feature to restrict data entry to a list of permissible choices

Level
Intermediate

Instructional Method
Group: Internet-based

NASBA Field of Study
Computer Software & Applications (2 hours)

Program Prerequisites
Previous Experience with Excel Spreadsheets.

Advance Preparation
None