Maximize Excel: Intro to Macros Part 1
Presented by David H. Ringstrom, CPA
 
Event Date/Time: 12/9/25 3:00 PM Eastern
Duration: 100 minutes
 

In this presentation author and Excel expert David H. Ringstrom, CPA cherry-picks 10 of the best features in Excel that can make accountants more productive. He'll also share 3 common time-wasters that can frustrate accountants and heavy users of Excel. You'll learn about two key worksheet functions, the benefits of the Table feature, pivot tables for report writing, and managing information overload by filtering. Tame unwieldy workbooks by instantly unhiding all hidden worksheets, and then deploying Excel's Custom Views feature to enable you to hide/unhide multiple worksheets at once. You'll see how to build in some insurance against Excel crashes, and quickly identify duplicates within a list. David will also discuss three common timewasters/frustrations in Excel.

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.

Who should attend: Professionals seeking to use Microsoft Excel more effectively.

Topics typically covered:

• Understanding the purpose and nuances of Excel’s Personal Macro Workbook.

• Recording a contact info macro.

• Weighing the risks versus benefits of using macros in Excel spreadsheets.

• Recording a macro to automate using Center Across Selection.

• Making sense of the Enable Content prompt related to macros in Excel.

• Enabling an on-screen shortcut for launching Excel’s Macro Recorder.

• Comparing Center Across Selection to Merged cells for centering text across two or more columns.

• Preserving macros by saving workbooks in the XLSM format versus the default XLSX format.

• Uncovering macro-related commands within Excel’s user interface.

• Navigate Excel menus entirely by keyboard shortcuts.

• Automating the cleanup of an accounting report in Microsoft Excel with a recorded macro.

• Adding clickable shapes to Excel spreadsheets as a visual means of launching Excel macros.

Learning objectives:

• Recall the file format that results in discarding macros from your workbook when you save.

• Identify which non-alphanumeric character can be used within a macro's name.

• Recall the Excel menu that contains the Record Macro command.