Maximize Excel: Templates and Themes

CPE Credit: 2 hours

In this presentation, author and Excel expert David H. Ringstrom, CPA, will guide you through standardizing your workbooks with Excel templates and themes. He’ll demonstrate how to create and reuse workbook and worksheet templates, locate Excel’s template folders, customize theme colors and fonts, and save your own themes for future use. You’ll also learn how to protect worksheets while allowing edits to specific ranges, and how to streamline data entry with data-validation drop-down lists. Packed with practical, ready-to-use techniques, this webinar is designed to help you build consistent, professional spreadsheets—faster.
 
David demonstrates every technique at least twice: first on a PowerPoint slide with numbered steps, and then live in Excel for Windows using the subscription-based Microsoft 365 version. Differences between Microsoft 365 and earlier perpetual versions of Excel (2021, 2019, and earlier) are clearly identified during the session and reinforced in the accompanying handouts. Participants also receive an Excel workbook containing many of the examples used in the presentation.
 
Who should attend:
Professionals seeking to enhance their Excel skills, streamline workflows with custom templates, and improve data presentation using Microsoft 365 will benefit from this webinar.
 
Topics typically covered:
 
• Documenting workflows and providing input guidance with Data Validation, without limiting user flexibility.
 
• Protecting a worksheet to ensure users are limited to changing only specific areas of a worksheet.
 
• Enabling selected users to access protected areas of a worksheet by way of the Allow Users to Edit Ranges feature.
 
• Guiding data entry with conditional formatting.
 
• Preventing users from overwriting key workbooks by way of the Read Only setting.
 
• Creating an in-cell list by way of Excel’s Data Validation feature.
 
• Storing theme settings as a THMX file.
 
• Defining palettes and font pairs to fit your needs.
 
Learning objectives:
 
• State how to quickly add a template, such as an Amortization Table, to an existing workbook.
 
• Recall which command enables you to import cell styles from another open workbook.
 
• Recognize which option on Excel's File tab enables you to search for free spreadsheet templates.