Discussion on:

A few ways to customize Excel to increase your productivity

I have been a heavy user of Excel (and Lotus 123 before that) for many years and I the first thing I do with each new install is customize it the way I like it. Which default Excel settings do you change?

In fairness, if you're working in an environment where the IT Team did not customise the Office install, you're probably in an environment where the Owner of a file can be easily determined my NTFS attributes. And if things are desperate enough to be scrapping between colleagues as to who created document X, you may want to reconsider where you're working. ; )

I use a Custom VBA script found online to get rid of Blank Sheets before I send or upload a Excel workbook.

I've used it ever since Office 2007 came out
http://www.vbaexpress.com/kb/getarticle.php?kb_id=396

It's one of the first Macros that I put in place on a New Excel install, on the Quick Access toolbar right next to the Undo button.

... it has to be executed, as you said, each time you send or upload a workbook. Not a big deal, but by setting the defaults as Susan indicated, which you can do just one time, you wouldn't have any blank sheets that needed to be deleted.

I work in a firm that has a number of offices around the country. As I'm often preparing reports or whatever on an Office basis, I'm forever inserting the list of office names.

Instead, use a "Custom List" to get Excel to help. As you probably know, if you enter Jan in a cell then use the fill handle to expand the selection, Excel fills in the month names in order. This is a Custom List.

If you also work with "standard" lists that you are always re-entering or copying from somewhere, create Custom Lists for your data.

In Excel 2010
Enter the items you want in your list in a column on a worksheet. Then go to File/Options and then to the Advanced section. Scroll to the General area and click the "Edit Custom Lists..." button. In the dialog that comes up, click the "select arrow" next to the Import button, select your list of information, and then click Import.

Now, if you type an item in your list in a cell and do a fill, you'll get your Custom List of items.

Hope that someone finds this useful.
Regards

At work, I keep the default "after Enter, move selection down." But at home, personal spreadsheets are entered left-to-right, so I set the action to "move selection right."

I also add "Paste as Values" to the Quick Access Toolbar" for one-click access, since I use it frequently.

I change the Paste Values default -- that thing drives me nuts if I don't!

Startup folder: Contains workbook and sheet templates formatted for printing; basic custom styles. Also my Personal macro workbook with lots of useful stuff in it. This also avoids the need to set the number of sheets ina new workbook (who needs two enopty sheets every time?)
Quick access toolbar: I need at least a 22" screen to see mine. before Excel 2007 I had three custom toolbars (top, left and bottom), I would to eb able to do that again.
As many recently-used files as possible. I also use the "Quickly access this number of Recent Workbooks" option (at the bottom of the Recent Workbooks page - first in 2010?)
Custom lists: One of my favourites is "High, Medium; Low" for sorting prioritised lists
Default file location:

I have been trying to figure out how to change the default settings on pivot tables, to no avail. I was hoping that might be one of the topics in this article.

Anyone have suggestions? Specifically, I want to be able to change Pivot Table Options > Layout & Format > Autofit column widths on update to unchecked, and in Totals & Filters > Grand Totals unchecked.