The greatest value of a picture is when it forces us to notice what we never expected to see.
John W Tukey, Exploratory Data Analysis

Jean-Georges Vongerichten showed me the value in taking away, taking things off of a plate. … The more you put on the plate, the easier it is to hide. The more you take away, there’s nowhere to hide—it has to be good.

Chef Wylie Dufresne

A Conversation with Wylie Dufresne

Stop Excel Control being Clicked

Textbox hack

In a protected worksheet users can still click on checkbox and option button controls. A warning message will pop up if the control’s linked cells are locked. There is a technique you can use to stop users clicking on these controls. This involves a macro that you can run just before you protect the sheet.

Fixing the UNIQUE Function

The UNIQUE function in Excel has a problem when it comes to handling blank cells. Blank cells are treated as zero and if you have a blank cell and a zero in a range then UNIQUE will return two zeros. Also, if a cell has a function that returns a blank cell, then that is treated differently than a blank cell. Let’s create a custom function to fix UNIQUE’s blank cell blind spot.

Hiding Multiple Sheets in Excel Using xlVeryHidden

Flexible solution

It is easy to hide multiple sheets in Excel. Unfortunately, it now just as easy to unhide those sheets. You can hide sheets and make it harder to unhide them. You can use a setting called xlVeryHidden (no kidding) that won’t display the sheet name if you right click a sheet tab and choose unhide sheets.

The myth is that there isn’t enough time. There is plenty of time. There isn’t enough focus with the time you have. You win by directing your attention toward better things.

James Clear