Even though I live thousands of miles away from Florida, here in Newfoundland, we have just had a miserable week of weather thanks to the remnants of Hurricane Ivan. But that was nothing compared to what my friends down south have experienced over the past few weeks. I hope wherever you are, things are going well for you.

I need your help. Will you help me reach my goal? As you know, I really love using Excel and sharing my tips with everyone who could use them. My goal is to have my weekly tips going out to 4,000 readers by the end of this year. And I would really appreciate it if you could help me reach my goal by sharing this newsletter with all of your 'Excel-loving' friends and colleagues. You will be helping me and also everyone you share my tips with. Thanks in advance for your support. Click here now to recommend this newsletter

Have a great week and keep on Excelling.

To your success,
Francis J Hayes (The Excel Addict)

P.S. VERY IMPORTANT Please remember to include "TheExcelAddict" in the Subject line of any email you send me. This will help it stand out in the flood of junk email I have been receiving lately.

DISCOVER NEWFOUNDLAND AND LABRADOR, CANADA:
This is where I grew up: http://www.brigus.net/
This is where I now live: http://www.conceptionbaysouth.ca/
This is my beautiful province: http://www.gov.nf.ca/tourism/

Let's say you have a date 22/09/2004 in cell A1 and you want to determine the day of the week. The formula =WEEKDAY(A1) will return 4 (the 4th day of the week).

If you'd like to return the name of the weekday, use this formula:
=CHOOSE(WEEKDAY(A1),"Sun","Mon","Tue","Wed","Thu","Fri","Sat")

WEEKDAY(A1) will evaluate to 4, and CHOOSE will find the 4th item in the list.

Mark Victor Hansen, author of the mega best-selling 'Chicken Soup' book series wants to help you. Sign up for his weekly 'Rich Results' subscription. It’s absolutely free, no strings attached.

Usually I try to share tips with you that will help you become more productive, however this one may have the opposite effect. But it's a pretty neat trick I thought you might like, and as long as you don't get too carried away with it and waste too much time, a bit of fun won't hurt.

I'd like to show you how to spice up your worksheets by creating cool 3D effects with your cells. Try this on a new worksheet.

1. Select a range of cells (B2:H30) and select a background color (Format, Cells, Pattern or use the 'color bucket' toolbar button). Pick a color (i.e. Light Blue) that also has a lighter and darker color available on the color palette.
2. Now select a smaller range (C5:G10) within the range you just filled.
3. Select Format, Cells, and click the Borders tab.
4. Click the Color dropdown and select the lighter shade (i.e. Pale Blue) of the color you used in Step 1.
5. Make sure the Line Style on the bottom left of the Line Style box is selected (i.e. surrounded by a dotted border). If not, click to select it.
6. Click on the top border and the left border buttons.
7. Now, click on the Color dropdown again and select the darker shade (i.e. Dark Blue) of the color you used in Step 1.
8. Select one of the thicker border styles on the right side of the Line Style section.
9. Click on the bottom border and the right border.
10. Now, drum roll please ... Click OK.

Have fun and experiment with this yourself. There are many variations you can use. Try a light gray background with white and dark gray borders. Put the thick borders on the left and top and the thin borders on the bottom and right to give a sunken effect.

Right-click this link and Save As to download my sample worksheet.

P.S. Send me a copy of what YOU come up with. Maybe if I get anything impressive, I will post it on my website.

There are tens of millions of other Microsoft Excel users all over the world. The vast majority of them have a very limited knowledge of Excel's capabilities. My goal is to share this information with everyone I possibly can and help them to benefit from Excel's amazing capabilities.

Please help me spread the word about my newsletter. If you know other Excel users, please tell them about "Spreadsheet Tips From An Excel Addict". I know they'll appreciate it.

Maybe you know someone who supervises or employs many Excel users. That's where your referral could have a big impact.

VERY IMPORTANT: Please refer only people you know personally, who use Microsoft Excel and would benefit from this newsletter.

Yes, we've all had to deal with them. Someone sends you an email with link to a website but it doesn't work when you click on it because the email program has split the link on two lines.

You could try copying and pasting each part of the address into your browser's Address Bar, but that can be tedious and unreliable. Here's what I do when I need to reconstruct a link from an email.

1. Because you cannot edit an email in 'Read mode', you'll need to click the Forward button so you can edit it.
2. Put your cursor at the end of the first line of the broken link and press the Delete key once. You should now have a complete link
3. You probably won't be able to click on the link in your email at this point, so simply copy it and paste it in your browsers Address Bar and hit Enter.