I use Excel for 90% of the day. I use and create lots of sheets.
Nothing is worse than when your Boss asks you a question and you say,
"I have that info in a sheet I created last month", but because it is
over a month ago you either cannot remember the name or in which of the
multitude of folders it lives in. and he is standing there looking more
and more frustrated as you do a search on *.xls at a rough date.

I got really sick of this scenario and decided to do something about it
and this might help you!

Save a sheet called 'Commonly Used Files' or anything you want in
Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office11\Xlstart.

Every time you start Excel this sheet will open.

Then as you create and save a file go to this sheet and in say column A
give a brief description of what the sheet contains and in Column C
create a HYPERLINK to the sheet, if it is on a network it will have a
long name, but you can curtail it to what ever you want. In fact you
could do with just a description in Column A.

However, I have the description in say column 1 row 1, and the
Hyperlink adjacent in column 3 row 1, but then on row 2 the next months
file.

On SHEET 2 of the file I have Internet Explorer Hyperlinks, so thet I
do not need to open explorer first and go to Favourites.

On SHEET 3 I keep shortcuts.

Finally on SHEET 4 I keep email addresses.

If you find this useful maybe you can come up with other ideas I could
use.

Thanks for looking, and my Boss is no longer frustrated by my lack of
organisation, in fact he got me to set him up with a similar file to
all his Commonly Used Files.


--
philiphales
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One more thing you may want to add to each workbook:

A worksheet called Notes.

You could keep track of your updates (just a date and short description). But
you could also write down what you did (where you got the data--and how you got
the data). And maybe what each non-trivial field really means.

It may make it easier to backtrack and even mean fewer phone calls to you (well,
after you ask "Did you read the notes?")



philiphales wrote:

I use Excel for 90% of the day. I use and create lots of sheets.
Nothing is worse than when your Boss asks you a question and you say,
"I have that info in a sheet I created last month", but because it is
over a month ago you either cannot remember the name or in which of the
multitude of folders it lives in. and he is standing there looking more
and more frustrated as you do a search on *.xls at a rough date.

I got really sick of this scenario and decided to do something about it
and this might help you!

Save a sheet called 'Commonly Used Files' or anything you want in
Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office11\Xlstart.

Every time you start Excel this sheet will open.

Then as you create and save a file go to this sheet and in say column A
give a brief description of what the sheet contains and in Column C
create a HYPERLINK to the sheet, if it is on a network it will have a
long name, but you can curtail it to what ever you want. In fact you
could do with just a description in Column A.

However, I have the description in say column 1 row 1, and the
Hyperlink adjacent in column 3 row 1, but then on row 2 the next months
file.

On SHEET 2 of the file I have Internet Explorer Hyperlinks, so thet I
do not need to open explorer first and go to Favourites.

On SHEET 3 I keep shortcuts.

Finally on SHEET 4 I keep email addresses.

If you find this useful maybe you can come up with other ideas I could
use.

Thanks for looking, and my Boss is no longer frustrated by my lack of
organisation, in fact he got me to set him up with a similar file to
all his Commonly Used Files.

--
philiphales
------------------------------------------------------------------------
philiphales's Profile: http://www.excelforum.com/member.php...o&userid=18641
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--

Dave Peterson

Thanks Dave.

This sounds like a useful discipline, its these little things that we
never think of at the time, but are worth thier weight in gold months
later!!!


--
philiphales
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