In this presentation, author and Excel expert David H. Ringstrom, CPA, will focus on features that have outlived their useful life in Excel and show you the alternatives to use instead, as well as how to resurface buried features. The topics covered include maximizing productivity with the classic Full Screen View instead of the modern Full-Screen Mode for displaying the maximum number of worksheet rows. David will contrast features in Microsoft 365 such as Threaded Comments and cloud-based shared workbooks with the corresponding predecessor features. David will also demonstrate how worksheet functions continue to involve, including comparing long-standing features like CONCATENATE, LOOKUP, VLOOKUP with modern alternatives like CONCAT, TEXTJOIN, and XLOOKUP. You'll also see how to use the Spilled Range Operator with data from dynamic array functions, but that turns into a zombie when referencing a normal range of cells. David will give you a sense of how modern charts turn into the walking dead in older versions of Excel, and you'll see the modern replacement for the AutoSave feature that vanished from Excel for many years. Join David for a whimsical look at powerful Excel features from a different perspective than usual.

David is the author of “Microsoft Excel 365 for Dummies”, “Exploring Microsoft Excel’s Hidden Treasures”, and has written or co-authored six other books. He demonstrates every technique at least twice: first, on a PowerPoint slide with numbered steps, and second, in the subscription-based Excel for Microsoft 365. David draws your attention to any differences in Excel 2021, 2019 or 2016 during the presentation and in his detailed handouts. The handouts include an Excel workbook with most of the examples he uses during his demonstrations.

Excel for Microsoft 365 is a subscription-based product that receives periodic feature updates. Conversely, perpetually licensed versions have year numbers in their names and do not receive any feature updates.

• Investigating the risks associated with the obsolete LOOKUP function.

• Learning how to deal with annoying changes to Print Preview in Word 2010 and later.

• Visualizing data with a Funnel chart in the newest versions of Excel.

• Recovering the From Text command in Excel 2019 and later.

• Transforming an unwieldy list of data into a format that’s ready to be analyzed within a PivotTable.

• Converting .XLS files compatible with Excel 2003 into the modern Excel workbook format.

• Restoring the Workbook Sharing and Track Changes commands that have vanished in Excel 2021 and Microsoft 365.

• Adding Full Screen View to the Quick Access Toolbar to view more rows in large spreadsheets.

• Crafting self-resizing formulas with the new Spilled Range Operator in in Excel 2021 and Microsoft 365.

• Transforming text files into PivotTable ready formats with Power Query.

• Understanding how the VLOOKUP function allows you to look up data instead of having to manually reference individual cells.

• Exploring the XLOOKUP worksheet function in Excel 2021 and Microsoft 365.

• State the keystoke that exits Full Screen mode once you've added the command to your Quick Access Toolbar?

• State which versions of Excel allow you to create workspace files.

• Recall where to restore the Track Changes command within the Quick Access Toolbar customization screen.