Excel used to be the poor schmuck’s database, with spreadsheets that just sort of sat there. You could create something more sophisticated with LOOKUP functions, but they were a huge hassle to set up.

One of Excel’s greatest tricks is the dimensional or 3D reference. This feature, which allows you to create formulas that refer to the same cell or range on multiple worksheets, simplifies the ...

Visual Basic for Applications can make helpful items such as links appear on screen. You can open an external spreadsheet by clicking a link in an Excel spreadsheet. For instance, you might add an ...