Page 234 - Excel 2013 All-in-One For Dummies

216 Find and Replace This Disgrace!
To convert a cell range that contains formulas to its calculated values (as though you had input them as numbers), select the cell range, click the Copy button on the Home tab, and then choose the Paste Values option from the Paste button’s drop-down menu without moving the cell cursor. This causes Excel to paste the calculated values on top of the formulas that created them, thus zapping the overlaid formulas and leaving you with only the com- puted values!
Find and Replace This Disgrace!
No discussion of spreadsheet editing would be complete without includ- ing the Find and Replace features in Excel. You can use the Find feature to quickly locate each and every occurrence of a specific string (a series of characters) in a worksheet. You can use the Replace feature to have Excel actually update the cells that it finds with new text or numbers.
Both the Find and the Replace features share the same dialog box (aptly called the Find and Replace dialog box). If you only want to find a cell’s par- ticular contents, you just use the options on the Find tab. (The Find tab is automatically selected when you open the Find and Replace dialog box by clicking the Find option on the Find & Select button’s drop-down menu on the Home tab of the Ribbon, or when you press Alt+HFDF or simply Ctrl+F.) If you want to update the contents of some or all of the cells that you find, use the options on the Replace tab (which is automatically selected when you open the Find and Replace dialog box by choosing the Replace option from the Find & Select button’s drop-down menu, or when you press Alt+HFDR or simply Ctrl+H).
The Find and Replace tabs in the Find and Replace dialog box contain a bunch of search options that you can use in finding and replacing stuff
in your spreadsheet. The only problem is that these options are hidden when you first open the Find and Replace dialog box. To expand the Find and Replace dialog box to display the extra search options on the Find and Replace tab, click the Options button.
Finding stuff
To use the Find command to locate information in your worksheet, follow these steps:
1. To search the entire worksheet, select a single cell. To restrict the search to a specific cell range or nonadjacent selection, select all the cells to be searched.
2. Choose the Find option from the Find & Select button’s drop-down menu on the Ribbon’s Home tab or press Ctrl+F.
Excel opens the Find and Replace dialog box with the Find tab selected.