How many times have I been asked this – let me count the ways . . .

How can I set up an excel document with suspense dates and get alerts from Outlook to remind me when they are due?

I built an Excel project management spreadsheet that uses start and end dates to track tasks. One field shows remaining days to complete the task. My question, is there a way to have excel utilize my Outlook to send me an email once a task is within 3 days of completion or past due? (I do not have the funds to license all my staff with Microsoft Project)

And a dozen more in the comments of various articles. Here’s the deal gang, while this sounds like an excellent idea – automatic Outlook reminders from an Excel spreadsheet – its not.

If you approach this with VBA code that says “Send an email to Outlook when . . .” that “When” statement has the potential to really screw some things up. First off, the spreadsheet needs to be open for the code to run. What happens when you go on vacation for two weeks and come back and open the file? What if you just forget to open the actual file because you are relying on an automatic reminder? How many pop-up meail windows are you going to get? How do you know everyone was emailed that needed to be emailed?

This is a case where automation sounds fantastic but in my opinion its really not a good idea.

Soapbox aside . . . Of course I have figured out an alternative for you.

I think the original script for this came from Martin Green over at FontStuff.com, or I found it in a discussion board. Disclaimer: I have modified the script to bend it to my will but I want to give props to whoever wrote the original core script. OK, props given – lets solve this mystery!

Do you want Excel to alert you of an approaching due date? Do you want to be able to send an automatic email to a person related to an item in that spreadsheet? Try it this way:

1. Download this file: Outlook eMail from Excel. (17k zip)
It is the example we will work from. I am going to show you a few tricks and then leave you to your own devices. Copy the pieces that work for your unique situation, ignore the ones you don’t need.

2. We are going to be working in developer mode so make sure you know how to enable it in Excel. The directions are in this posting.

3. Open up the spreadsheet you downloaded and follow along… Oh, and the spreadsheet has a Macro in it that you have to enable. Its safe, Trust me. I used to work for the Government.

So what are we looking at?

These columns can be rearranged anyway you see fit for your unique project. In this example we have people’s names, an email subject, an imaginary due date, an “email sent?” column, the person’s email address and a custom body message.

Click on any cell in a row to select it and then click the SEND MAIL button at the top of the spreadsheet. I’ll choose row 6, “Bill Jones”, the email generated looks like this:

What happened? The email address was filled, the subject line of the email was filled in and the custom body message was put in the body between two other lines of text.

Light-bulbs going off yet?

Where did those other lines of text in the body come from? A Macro. Let’s take a look at that macro so you can customize it.

Choose the DEVELOPER tab in Excel and click Macros (Again, the directions for enabling the Developer tab are in this posting.)

With the Macro box open select SendEmail and Edit.

Here is the code that does the magic.

There are 3 lines of code you need to be aware of so you can modify them if need be:

1. Email = Cells(ActiveCell.Row, 10)
2. Subj = Cells(ActiveCell.Row, 4)
3. Msg = Msg & “Dear ” & Cells(ActiveCell.Row, 1) & “,” & vbCrLf & vbCrLf & “Here is some precanned text before the BODY info in the spreadsheet. ” & vbCrLf & vbCrLf & Cells(ActiveCell.Row, 13) & vbCrLf & vbCrLf & ” And here is some more precanned text in the macro AFTER the Body stuff.”

Line 1 says “Get the email address from Row 10 of the active cell.” This is a little misleading, its actually column 10 or “J”.

Line 2? Get the email subject from row (column) 4 or “D”

And Line 3? Prints “Dear” and whatever in is column 1 or “A”, and then the precanned text before and after whatever in in the spreadsheet in column 13 or “M”.

If you change around the columns in your spreadsheet, simply change the numbers to correspond to the data’s new location! You can even add more information in the email from your spreadsheet – the magic term is “Cells(ActiveCell.Row, ????)”

Not too bad! Not too complicated either.

Now lets take a look at the date information back in the spreadsheet:

In the top right hand corner of the spreadsheet is Today’s Date, Excel formula being “=TODAY()”

The dates in column “F” are “Due Dates” I entered in manually. Maybe your spreadsheet will calculate these cells from other data you have. The color change is based on a “Rule” that is comparing the date we entered to today’s date. You could just as easily give yourself a heads-up by referencing a date in the future instead of today’s date “=Today () +7″, etc.

Back to the rule:

1. Highlight cell F4
2. Select Conditional Formatting
3. Select Manage Rules

And there is the rule that says “Blank Cells are just white” and “If the value of this cell (the date of this cell) is less than or equal to Today’s Date in R1 – color me reddish.”

You know have a visual flag that the item is due or past due and action needs to be taken!  Again, change this to whatever suits your need! Make it red, make it green – your choice!

The red X in the sent column is just another “food for thought” column. A reminder to yourself that you actually acted on the due or overdue item. So let’s look at this from the beginning on a typical work day:

1. Come in to the office.
2. Have Coffee
3. Chit Chat
4. Check Facebook
5. Etc.
6. Open Spreadsheet
7. Look at the DATE column. Is anything highlighted that doesn’t have a Sent notification?
8. Yes? Click a cell in that row and click the SEND EMAIL button.
9. Send the email
10. Put an X in the Sent box!
11. Check Facebook

That’s pretty labor unintensive! Seriously? 3 Steps

1. Look at the DATE column. Is anything highlighted that doesn’t have a Sent notification?
2. Yes? Click a cell in that row and click the SEND EMAIL button.
3. Put an X in the Sent box!

I am looking forward to see how all of you will improve upon this simple concept. This has been a hot topic in the comments section. There is no one size fits all solution but I hope that by taking this simplistic approach I save a lot of people a lot of time.

It doesn’t have to be complicated, and you don’t need to be a programmer!

So you want to create a drop down calendar in Excel? Apart from sending alerts to Outlook from Excel (working on that article as well) this has been the most requested how-to as of late. For example:

Reader Tim Asks:

How do I insert a calendar as a way for a user to click on the cell have the date box open and choose the date that should be in the cell? Also where do I send the beer?

Reader Wayne Asked:

I am sure that I saw a pull down menu in a worksheet cell.  I want to have a cell formated so that I can have a pull down menu of a calendar in which to choose the date.

This seems like it would be so easy yet when you look around on-line the answers are all full of VBA scripts and custom code.

I assume you just want someone using the spreadsheet to be able to select a cell, have a calendar drop down and then populate the field with whatever date the person chooses. Yes it can be done. Yes it is fairly involved. And yes, I have a workaround.

Would you like the easiest, cheesiest, sleaziest way to do this? Well then watch this:

The first thing you need to do is enable the Developer Tab in Excel.

1. Select the Pearl or “Office Button” in Excel. The Pearl is the ball in the top left corner that gives you the option to Print, Save, etc.
2. With the Pearl menu open select Excel Options from the very bottom on the right.
3. Another menu will open – Select Popular
4. Check the box for “Show Developer Tab in the Ribbon“

Now you have the developer tab with all the controls for forms, xml, code, etc.

Go to the developer tab and select Insert, followed by the little Pink Floyd-esque More Controls icon.

Scroll through the list of controls and look what’s available. There are all sorts of funky add-ins you can use in your spreadsheets! We are looking for the Microsoft Date and Time Picker Control

Highlight it and select OK.

Your mouse will turn in to a cross hair – click and hold, draw a rectangle, release. You now have a date box!

You will also see code in the top akin to “=EMBED(“MSComCtl2.DTPicker.2″,”")”

You will also notice that you are in Design Mode because that icon is highlighted. This allows you to play with the settings for the date box you just created.

Deselect Design Mode and you have a date control! Select the drop down and a calendar appears! Holy Cow that’s super cool awesome but guess what! It doesn’t do anything!

You can click it and change the date as much as you want but nothing else is changing in your spreadsheet!

Here is where the genius of my non-code writing laziness pays off. Ready?

What cell do you want the date to change in? Let’s say C5

1. Ok, In B5 type SELECT DATE:
2. In D5 enter the formula =C5
3. Still got that calendar control visible like in the image above?
4. Let’s go back to Design Mode by clicking it. Move the calendar control box up around the C3 area just to move it out of the way.
5. Right Click in the calendar control and select Properties.
6. A properties menu will open up
7. Look for the field Linked Cell and enter C5 (that’s where we want the date change to happen)
   
8. You might get an error message – ignore it!
9. Close the Properties menu
10. Deselect Design Mode

Here’s where it all comes together. .

1. Select the Date Drop down and change the date
2. You will see Cell C5 change to that date
3. You will see cell D5 (which =C5) change as well. The D5 was just to ensure that C5 was actually showing a date.
4. Repeat step 1-3 until you are as giddy as a little girl.

Last Question: How do I use this?

Well you can create as many of these drop downs as you like. You can tell each one what cell to update (Linked Cell) and you can move the Date Control right over the top of the field it is updating!  Think about that – Move the date picker right over the top of the cell it is linked to. Only you know the truth! There is no advanced code, you’re just hiding the data in C5 under the Date control that is updating or controlling C5! Then do any date calculations you need to do using C5 as the reference!

I told you it was sleazy, cheesy and easy!

I’ll make it even easier – here’s the spreadsheet I used to write this tutorial and take screen shots

Excel Drop Down Date Example (12k)

And Tim, You any any other reader can always send the beer to me by clicking beer mug at the top of the page.

Reader D. Rogers Asked:

“Is there a way to embed a powerpoint document in Outlook so that you can actually view the presentation from the body of the email?”

Yes there is! If you are using Outlook 2007 there is a built-in preview function. There are two ways to use it.

I personally like to use the Reading Pane function in Outlook (set to the right) to see the entire body of an email message I have selected. To enable this option open Outlook and select View -> Reading Pane:

Then, click on an email in your inbox that contains a PowerPoint attachment (or a Word Document or Excel File) and you will see the following warning:

Selecting Preview File will start the preview engine and you will see the contents of the attachments right in the the email message itself!

If you choose not to use the reading pane, you can open any email with a previewable attachment and you will get the same option to preview the file:

Select Preview File and and you never have to fire up PowerPoint, Word, Excel, etc – the contents of the file will be viewed right in the email body!

This came up in a conversation with my boss . .  How do you spell check Excel?

There are two ways, you can check a single spreadsheet or an entire workbook.

To check a single sheet

1. Click where where you want to start the spell check.
   • If you click in the first cell (a1) it will check the entire sheet.
   • If you click in cell zz99 it will start spell checking from there.
   • If you select a range of cells only those cells will be checked.
2. Go to the Ribbon.
3. Select the Review tab.
4. Select Spelling.

To spell check all of the sheets in a workbook:

1. Right-click on a sheet tab at the bottom of your Excel spreadsheet.
2. Click Select All Sheets.
3. Go to the Ribbon.
4. Select the Review tab.
5. Select Spelling.

For a shorcut to any of these procedures you can simply make your selection and then press F7 on your keyboard.

If you are not an F7 remembering type of person try this:

1. Go to the Review tab
2. Right click on Spelling
3. Select “Add to Quick Access Toolbar“
4. Right click in the ribbon and make sure you select “Show Quick Access Toolbar“

I like my quick access tool bar at the top of Excel as well, like this:

So no more mispllled werds in Excell!

I received a request for the following how-to: “I want to embed an outlook calendar entry in a document to allow people to click on the object to add an event to their outlook calendar. How do you do that?”

So you want to create a Word / Excel / PowerPoint document and embed a calendar event in it? No Problem!

1. Create a new calender entry / event in Outlook

2. Click on the entry so it is highlighted or selected and then click FILE -> SAVE AS

3. Save it as an “iCalendar Format” or “vCalendar Format” type document. I saved mine to my desktop.

4. Open Word (or Excel, Or PowerPoint, etc) and there are several ways to embed the file:

a. Drag the file from your desktop into the document. This gives you the least amount of control over the format.

b. Choose INSERT -> OBJECT -> CREATE FROM FILE. Browse to the file and select it, and choose the “Display as Icon” option. If you have an icon you prefer select it. (C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office12 has the office icons)

You now have an icon embedded in your document. You can right click on it to rename it (Select Package Object). When another user double clicks it their calendar event will open. All they have to do is select SAVE AND CLOSE!

Keep in mind, you can also email the file you saved to your desktop as well!