Teach Yourself MS Office 2003 In 24 Hours

AutoCorrect Worksheets

Use AutoCorrect as you type Excel entries just as you used AutoCorrect in Word. When you type an abbreviation for an AutoCorrect entry, Excel converts that abbreviated form to the complete AutoCorrect entry for you when you press the spacebar or move the pointer to another cell.

To add AutoCorrect entries, perform the same steps that you do with Word; namely use the Tools, AutoCorrect Options menu to display the AutoCorrect dialog box and add your entries there.

Finding and Replacing Data

Like Word, Excel contains a powerful search-and-replace operation that can search your worksheet for values and replace those values if needed. Although Word users often use Word's search-and-replace, the feature gets less use in Excel. Nevertheless, the feature is extremely beneficial for worksheets. Imagine that you have a worksheet that tracks the payroll for your company, and the minimum wage increases. Instead of laboriously changing each and every cell that includes the minimum wage, you can use Excel's find-and-replace feature to quickly update the data.

You display the Find and Replace dialog box by choosing Find on the Edit menu. Alternatively, you can press Ctrl+F. Figure 8.1 shows the Find and Replace dialog box in Excel, after you click the Options button to show extra details.

You can request that Excel search by rows or columns. If your worksheet is generally longer than wide (as most are), select By Columns to speed your search. Select the Match Case option if you want Excel to match the uppercase and lowercase letters in your search exactly.

Use Formulas if you are searching for part of a formula (you learn all about formulas in the next hour), use Values if you want Excel to search only the calculated cells (not within formulas), and use Comments if you want Excel to search through cell comments. Generally, you are searching through formulas, so Excel makes Formulas the default search target.

The Match Entire Cell Contents option indicates to Excel that a cell must contain your entire Find value and nothing else before it makes a proper match.

If you want Excel to replace the found value with another value, select the Edit, Replace command to display the Replace page of the Find and Replace dialog box, as shown in Figure 8.2.

Enter the text you want Excel to locate in the Find What field and type the text you want to replace that with in the Replace with field. Click the Replace All button if you want Excel to replace all occurrences of the found text. (Be sure that you want to replace all occurrences, or you'll possibly overwrite data unexpectedly.) Otherwise, click Find Next to find the next matching value and, if that is a value you want to replace, click Replace. If it is not a value you want to replace, click Find Next to locate the next occurrence.