Mimic a Webpage

Occasionally one of my students will express dismay at the difficulty of navigating around a large Excel workbook. Although I am a great advocate of containing your data and Excel reports in as few worksheets as possible, the fact remains that some workbooks are by necessity quite large. This is also true of websites. Some sites are by their nature quite expansive and would be considerably difficult to navigate if it weren’t for the ubiquitous linking system.

So what does a clever Excel Guru do to solve this problem? He or she uses Hyperlinks!

Most Excel users do not take advantage of hyperlinks to enhance the ease-of-use of their workbooks. By employing this feature within a workbook, you can add both Functionality and Coolness! (And, after all, “Coolness” is what really counts…)

Inserting a Hyperlink into your workbook is Incredibly Easy. Simply choose the cell or shape that you want to put the link into, and Right-Click / Hyperlink. Then click on the appropriate Link-to area in the left-hand column, and complete the address information. Bamm! Simple as that!

For Coolest effect, you can Mimic a Website by drawing a Shape like a Button for your link. Here is what you do:

1)  First of all, get rid of all of your extraneous gridlines by going to the View ribbon and Uncheck Gridlines.

2)  Go to the Insert ribbon, click on Shapes, choose a shape that makes your spreadsheet distinctive, and draw it onto your worksheet (take a few moments to make sure the formatting is just right…).

3)  Then Right-Click / Hyperlink, and finish the link as previously noted.

Hyperlinks. Add convenient navigation options and Pizzazz to your Excel sheets with this simple tool. Think about them the next time you paging through a big workbook. They may be just the touch of Coolness and Functionality you need!