ExcelTips (ribbon) for 17 October 2026

I've mentioned a few times over the past ten days or so that I'm now accepting students for my Excel Macros Master Class courses, and that the registration doors are now open.

The doors won't stay open forever, however. In fact, they will close in just a few more days, at the end of the day on Wednesday (October 21). It's not too late to join a class, but you'll want to act soon, as time is running out.

Since the deadline is approaching, I'll send you another reminder on Tuesday, the day before the actual "closing."

In the meantime, I hope you enjoy the tips in this week's issue of the newsletter!

Changing the Default Scatter Point Color

When you want to change how your charts appear, the easiest approach is to create a chart template. This tip looks at one scenario where a chart template can be helpful and provides a pointer to where detailed information about chart templates can be found.

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(Thanks to Steve Aprahamian, Ryszard Raciborski, and Michael Avidan (MVP) for contributing to this tip.)

Calculating Monthly Interest Charges

Trying to calculate how much people owe you? If you charge interest or service charges on past-due accounts, there are a myriad of ways you can calculate balances. Here's a discussion on a few ways you can try.

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Limitations On Finding Characters

When you search for information in a worksheet, you expect Excel to return results that make sense. If you don't get a search result that matches what you can see in your worksheet, it is possible you are trying to do something that exceeds what Excel was designed to do.

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Removing a Macro from a Shortcut Key

When you assign a macro to a shortcut key, you make it easy to run the macro without ever removing your hands from the keyboard. If you later want to disassociate the macro and the shortcut key, you'll need the information in this tip.

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