Index/Contents Sheet

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philiphales

I use Excel for 90% of the day. I use and create lots of sheets.
Nothing is worse than when your Boss asks you a question and you say
"I have that info in a sheet I created last month", but because it i
over a month ago you either cannot remember the name or in which of th
multitude of folders it lives in. and he is standing there looking mor
and more frustrated as you do a search on *.xls at a rough date.

I got really sick of this scenario and decided to do something about i
and this might help you!

Save a sheet called 'Commonly Used Files' or anything you want i
Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office11\Xlstart.

Every time you start Excel this sheet will open.

Then as you create and save a file go to this sheet and in say column
give a brief description of what the sheet contains and in Column
create a HYPERLINK to the sheet, if it is on a network it will have
long name, but you can curtail it to what ever you want. In fact yo
could do with just a description in Column A.

However, I have the description in say column 1 row 1, and th
Hyperlink adjacent in column 3 row 1, but then on row 2 the next month
file.

On SHEET 2 of the file I have Internet Explorer Hyperlinks, so thet
do not need to open explorer first and go to Favourites.

On SHEET 3 I keep shortcuts.

Finally on SHEET 4 I keep email addresses.

If you find this useful maybe you can come up with other ideas I coul
use.

Thanks for looking, and my Boss is no longer frustrated by my lack o
organisation, in fact he got me to set him up with a similar file t
all his Commonly Used Files
 
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Dave Peterson

One more thing you may want to add to each workbook:

A worksheet called Notes.

You could keep track of your updates (just a date and short description). But
you could also write down what you did (where you got the data--and how you got
the data). And maybe what each non-trivial field really means.

It may make it easier to backtrack and even mean fewer phone calls to you (well,
after you ask "Did you read the notes?")
 
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philiphales

Thanks Dave.

This sounds like a useful discipline, its these little things that we
never think of at the time, but are worth thier weight in gold months
later!!!
 
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