Excel 2007 Quick Access Toolbar macro buttons

I ran into a strange issue today when attempting to add Excel 2007 macro shortcuts to a Quick Access toolbar saved in a shared template.  I could add the buttons and save them to the template, but as soon as I closed and re-opened Excel the buttons disappeared.  Standard built-in Excel functions worked just fine when saved to the shared template.

Even if I added a few built-in buttons, and just a single macro link, the buttons would all disappear the next time Excel was closed and re-opened.

Turns out there’s a glitch in the way Excel stores the macro name in one of the stored XML files in the template.  To correct this I needed to extract the template file (just rename the Excel macro-enabled template to a zip file then extract as you would any other compressed file), then remove the path information from the CustomUI.xml file.  Specific steps can be found in the thread here:

http://www.pcreview.co.uk/forums/thread-3834831.php

Hopefully this will be corrected by Microsoft.  Of course with the new Ribbon bars that may be easily edited in Office 2010 this may be less of an issue.

Useful Excel Shortcuts

At the speed in which business moves today, useful productivity enhancers can make the difference between getting work out the door on time and fighting with endless tight deadlines.  Certainly, we’ve all heard about software tools and programs that promise to make us twice as productive as we already are.  Oddly enough I’ve never really had one of those programs do anything but waste my time.  However, one timesaving tool I’ve never had fail me is learning how to use quick and simple keyboard shortcuts.  So, because I’m a big fan of Excel (and wanted to learn a few new keyboard shortcuts) I thought I’d share a few with you.

Another method I’ve used in the past to help me learn the “ins” and “outs” of a program is to use a quick reference guide.  For Microsoft Office programs, I’ve found the ones at Brainstorm.com to be quite good, however, you can find them at many different resellers.