Bacon Bits:

Here’s an easy tip from Excel MVP Bob Umlas – author of the new book, Excel Outside the Box.

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Let’s say you want to fill in some rows with the 1^st and the 15^th of every month.
» More: Use Fill Handle to Fill in the 1st and 15th of Each Month

Last week, I was working with some data when I encountered the need to merge two staggered columns.

That is to say, I needed to merge two columns where the data was blank in either one column or the other.

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Here is an example.
» More: Merging Two Staggered Columns

I’m back from the Power Analyst Bootcamp in Washington DC – and of course, it was a success. 37 of the finest analysts attended the 2-day event, where we shared our passion for Excel, deli meats, and spicy tricks and tips. In the end, everyone left with a bag full of new techniques that will make them better analysts.

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While I was gone, there seems to have been a flurry of activity and questions in reference to hacking into a protected workbook. A couple of years ago, I posted a slick technique you can use to hack into a protected 2007 worksheet. Apparently, hacking in a protected workbook is also a highly desired talent. So today, I’ll walk through the steps to hack into a protected workbook.

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Excel 2007 and 2010 files are essentially zipped packages that contain XML files. This means that if you take an xlsx file and change the extension to zip, you’ll be able to see all the xml documents that make up your Excel file. Not only that – you can change the content and properties of an Excel 2007 file simply by manipulating the XML documents that make it up.
» More: Hack into a protected Excel 2007 or 2010 Workbook