Mastering Excel's Custom Views Feature

In this presentation, Excel expert David H. Ringstrom, CPA, shares a variety of ways to automate your work in Excel by way of the Custom Views feature. David will also contrast Custom Views with the Sheet Views feature available in Excel 2021 and Excel for Microsoft 365. Both features allow you to hide or display rows and columns, as well as filter settings, by simply applying a view. Custom Views also enables you to hide and unhide worksheets. On the other hand, simply adding an Excel table to your workbook disables the Custom Views feature, whereas Sheet View does not have this limitation.

David is the author of “Microsoft Excel 365 for Dummies”, “Exploring Microsoft Excel’s Hidden Treasures”, and has written or co-authored six other books. He demonstrates every technique at least twice: first, on a PowerPoint slide with numbered steps, and second, in the subscription-based Excel for Microsoft 365. David draws your attention to any differences in Excel 2021, 2019 or 2016 during the presentation and in his detailed handouts. The handouts include an Excel workbook with most of the examples he uses during his demonstrations.

Excel for Microsoft 365 is a subscription-based product that receives periodic feature updates. Conversely, perpetually licensed versions have year numbers in their names and do not receive any feature updates.

Who Should Attend
Professionals seeking to use Microsoft Excel more effectively.

Topics Covered

• Freezing or unfreezing worksheet panes on demand with a custom view
• Gaining control of long lists of data by filtering instead of sorting
• Understanding the conflict that the Table feature poses with Custom Views in Excel for Windows
• Seeing how to use a single line of programming code to remove all custom views from a given workbook
• Restoring access to Custom Views when the feature is disabled
• Protecting hidden sheets from within a workbook
• Using Excel’s Custom Views feature to apply different print settings, including orientation and margins, to a single worksheet
• Understanding the limitations and frustrations of manually hiding and unhiding worksheets within a workbook
• Exploring the automation possibilities available by way of Excel’s Custom Views feature
• Turning screen elements—such as scroll bars, grid lines, worksheet tabs, and more—on or off by way of the Custom Views feature

Learning Objectives

• Identify the menu where the Custom Views feature resides
• Recognize which aspect of an Excel worksheet that cannot be captured by Excel's Custom Views feature
• Recognize how to enable, customize, and exit Sheet View in Excel to filter and sort data independently in a shared workbook

Level
Basic

Instructional Method
Group: Internet-based

NASBA Field of Study
Specialized Knowledge and Applications (2 hours)

Program Prerequisites
Prior experience with Microsoft Excel is recommended.

Advance Preparation
None