TheExcelAddict
 
A Challenge
 
 
Francis J Hayes (The Excel Addict)Hi fellow Excel Addict,
 
I have never done this before, but today I am issuing you a challenge. I just discovered a very useful Excel trick that I had always thought wasn't possible and I'm wondering how many others know about it.

Gail Michaels, one of my newsletter readers, asked me if there was a way to 'search up' in a worksheet. She has a worksheet database with items listed in chronological order. Using Edit, Find she could search from top to bottom but she wanted to search for the most recent items first, starting from the bottom of the worksheet and searching up. Many other programs have an option in their Find dialog boxes that allow you to search up or down, but not Excel's.

Here's the challenge Gail gave me: "If you can find a way to do this, it will be my all-time favorite tip and I promise I'll post a copy of your newsletter on my office door and leave it up for 6 months !!"

I didn't know of any built-in way to do this so I did some searching on the Internet, but still I didn't find anything. I decided to see if I could write a macro to do this. As I was working on my macro, I accidentally discovered a way to 'search up', without using macros. And it's so easy. I have been using Excel for almost 15 years. I can't believe I had never discovered this trick before. Why didn't someone tell me?

Is searching from bottom to top in some of your worksheets something that you would find useful? Are you curious to find out what the trick is? Look for my newsletter next week and I will share it with you.
 
If you already know the trick, let me know.

Have a great weekend and I'll talk to you soon,
Francis J Hayes (The Excel Addict)

Looking to take your Excel skills to the next level? Check out...