[TSG] Gurus Have A Spreadsheet Brand

Excel Education for the REAL WORLD!

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Before we get to today's exciting topic, there are a couple of housekeeping items I'd like to discuss with you as we wrap up your first week of Excel tips.

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Today, I want to discuss something that I rarely see discussed in Excel education. It's the topic of building your own spreadsheet brand.

From my perspective. someone has a "spreadsheet brand" if you can open up an Excel file and immediately know the exact person who built the spreadsheet.

Let's look at a quick example. Take a look at the following two submissions of work below. Without knowing anything about the individuals who created the two tables, who would you instantly think is better at their job? Who would you want to work for you?

I'm going to go out on a limb and say you are likely thinking the creator of the second table is much better at using Excel than the other.

But there's nothing really more advanced between the two submissions? It's the same data. It's just the second person spent an extra minute or two branding their spreadsheet.

The first person might actually be more intelligent & efficient with Excel, but they will never receive instant recognition in the minds of others compared to someone who takes time to format their spreadsheet work.

That is why establishing and consistently using your own brand can be so powerful!

If I've got your attention, let's work through a few quick techniques you can implement to start building your brand.

The easiest way to “brand” your spreadsheets is to create a custom color palette. Microsoft palettes (aka color themes) are great because they take a few main colors and proceed to provide you with a variety of corresponding shades. This provides you with a palette of about 60 colors to utilize.

99% of Excel users use the default Office color palette, which makes everyone's spreadsheet look similar. Aligning your spreadsheet with your company's brand or a more modern color palette and easily make your work look more professional.

Don’t know what colors to use? Well, your marketing team has likely done the work for you. Track down a copy of your company’s brand guide and as long as they provide you with color codes, you’re more than ready to get this setup.

You could also visit your company's website and find colors that they are utilizing.

You can create/edit/activate your color theme by going to the Page Layout >> Colors >> Customize Colors within Excel's Ribbon. From there, you'll see a dialog pop up that allows you to create a color palette of your own with color codes.

If you don’t have company brand colors or just want another option for modern colors, you’re more than welcome to use TheSpreadsheetGuru color palette I developed:

Dark 1: 000000Light 1: FFFFFFDark 2: 7E8995Light 2: 414042Accent 1: 439FFDAccent 2: E04C41Accent 3: 8D67E3Accent 4: FFC000Accent 5: 2E3E51Accent 6: 3DB182Hyperlink: 0563C1Followed Hyperlink: 954F72

If you want to build your own color palette, you can find images on Google that have the colors you like (try searching "Flat UI Colors" for some modern options).

From there just paste the image into PowerPoint and use the Eyedropper tool to extract the color code from the images to build out your palette.

After you've created your own color theme, you'll see it available to select in your Excel Ribbon within Page Layout >> Colors.

Having a logical flow to your spreadsheets not only helps your peers naturally understand the files you build, but it also gives the spreadsheets you output a lasting impression.

I typically structure my spreadsheets in the following order:

1. Instructions Tab - This is typically a large vertical textbox on a white background where I write out high-level instructions for each tab or provide descriptions for each tab's purpose.
2. Input Tab - A place for dropdowns, lists of categories, and other values that are linked to throughout your other spreadsheet tabs
3. Raw Data Tabs - These are tabs that just hold your original data sets. This will most likely be data you pull from systems or databases.
4. Calculation Tabs - Sometimes referred to as "helper" tabs. These tabs take your data and either consolidate or add additional calculations to your figures.
5. Summary Tabs - These are your output tabs where your audience goes to get their initial answers. The summaries should be prepared in a way where you can drop the tables/charts directly into a presentation.

I also like to give these tabs their own assigned color so that intuitively, a user picks up on what tab category they are looking at.

Using font colors to indicate the source of data can be really helpful for others to understand how the information was compiled.

There's no standardized way to do this, but as an example, here are my own font color rules:

• Blue font for same-sheet formulas
• Black font for non-formula values
• Green font for off-sheet references

I've found this so helpful over the years, I even added a button in my Tickmark add-in called the Data Organizer which scans the active spreadsheet and re-colors the font based on the above 3 bulleted cell content states.

Here's an example:

As you'll see above, it's also very helpful to include legends indicating what your formats mean (another feature included in my Tickmark add-in)

Here is probably the easiest suggestion I have that can polish up your spreadsheet tables/results. Simply hide the spreadsheet gridlines!

While it's great have gridlines with data sets, having a white/transparent background adds some refinement to what you ultimately want your audience to see.

This is something I have added to my QAT so I can quickly toggle the setting on/off depending on what I'm building in Excel.

Hopefully, I was able to convey that putting in a little extra work to brand your spreadsheets is an easy way to differentiate yourself from others and will likely lead to more opportunities in your career.

After you intentionally practice incorporating your brand into your files, the process will become almost second nature.

For me, I am always looking for ways to inject my brand into a spreadsheet as quickly as possible. Oftentimes, I'm throwing together something that needs to be presented by an executive in 15 minutes!

Those scenarios led me to build out an Excel Add-in called myBrand. This tool brings branding functionalities right to your Home tab where you can:

• Format headings with cell fill/text color at once
• Lighten/Darken colors
• Insert company logos
• Pull color from an eyedropper tool

Example MyBrand button setup:

If you want to add a little bit of automation to your branding, this add-in might be a tool that you can utilize to quickly polish up your data. It would definitely be worth taking advantage of the free 2-week trial period to find out!

I've written A LOT about Excel over the years. Here are a few articles that might teach you something new today!

• How To Use A Double XLOOKUP Formula
• How To Customize The Order Of Your Excel Slicer Buttons
• Troubleshooting Excel Print Margins
• 7 Ways To Generate Unique Values List In Excel

Today I'm going to be sharing my favorite mouse to use. I've played around with all sorts of mice throughout my career, and I quickly became obsessed with using the Logitech Marathon mouse.

It initially piqued my interest with its claim to have an extremely long battery life (3+ years). It definitely lived up to the hype, but this mouse packed in much more than the lack of needing to change the battery.

The ergonomic angle of this mouse is on point and allows my wrist to maintain a natural position throughout the day.

The wireless connection has never given me a problem and the center wheel has two states you can toggle based on how smooth/rough you want the scrolling feedback to be.

Overall, this has been the mouse I consistently turn to while working my day job and powering through nights writing for TheSpreadsheeGuru.

It's definitely worth picking up if you're not satisfied with your current mouse.

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Hopefully, this newsletter brought you some value today. I absolutely love sharing the tips I've come across or developed over the years and also receiving feedback from everyone.

If you have any thoughts on the topics covered in this email, feel free to respond back.

Until next time!

Chris
Founder, TheSpreadsheetGuru.com