A little help with Excel

DR2Sentinel

So I just got this great new job where I mostly do what I feel like doing on a computer all day but the rest of the time I'm using programs that I’m not familiar enough with.
One is called ServiceCEO and if there happens to be a whiz with that around then let me know coz it annoys me greatly.
The other, and the purpose of this thread, is Excel which I’m not half as familiar with as I would like to be and really should be. Right now I'm trying to de-paper some of this office (something they're about 10 years behind on) and get out scheduling into Excel and off of the pencil and paper scheduling book we're using (yeah they still make those - who knew?)
I got a pretty solid template for scheduling from Office's website and I was able to mostly edit it how I want. I've only got two things I can't get to work right.
The first one should be easy, I want to select a range of cells (say 9am to 12pm) and block that all in as one job type (example - Office) and not have to do it one cell at a time. I'm sure this is something stupid I'm not doing right but when I select the range and then pick from the list it only shades the one cell.
the next problem might be trickier, I’d like to be able to use one header, as in one type of job and then be able to enter data under that which will show up nicely in the cells. I work for a window cleaning company so we like out schedules to be blocked with where the people are going to be. Name, address, phone number, etc. and don't want to have to go into the setup page and create a new entry and all that every time. I'd like to just be able to enter it.
Maybe I’m not going at this whole thing right and there's a better way to do it (with or without Excel) but I've included a link to the spreadsheet so you can see what I'm talking about.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/7edi5ja6rtb7t95/newshifts.xltx

DR2Sentinel

Well I figured out the fill in thing that I was having issues with. Feel kinda dumb on that one (but I figured I would) though i still can't figure out how to, in essence, lay an address on top of the filled in schedule (if it's possible to do such a thing)

Orogogus

It's not clear to me what you want it to look like at the end. Two possibilities:

1. You can right click on the cell and choose Insert Comment and type in the address and contact information. This puts a little red arrow in the upper right corner to indicate there's a comment, and when you mouseover the cell it shows your comment.

2. You can use ALT+Enter and just type on the new line, if you just want your information right in the cell. But this will break the time summations and fancy color coding without considerable rejiggering.

EDIT: To clarify, you use ALT+Enter when you're typing in a cell. If you're using the dropdown box to fill out your cells then you have to double click it or press F2 so that you're typing in the cell, and then ALT+Enter inserts a return character to start a new line within the cell.

DR2Sentinel

The comment thing seems like it will serve the purpose I need to. It would be nice to be able to type right in the cells without breaking all the fanciness but that's not requisite. This is already better than it was and thanks - can't believe I didn't think of comments!

Pailryder

i'd recommend (since you are trying to get away from paper) that you create a customer sheet with their address/contact info in a new sheet (headers being AccountID, Name, Phone, Street1, Street2, City, State, Zip, etc.) and reference the accountID in your note. That way you can call back to your spreadsheet with the customer info if you ever need to keep more complex information. Your customer sheet could even have notes etc.
It will be slightly less convenient because you are referencing another page, but i think in the long run it will be better.

DR2Sentinel

Sounds like it, of course I don't really know how to do that...

kaliyama

It sounds like you have almost no familiarity with excel at all. Your issue is that not only do you not know how to do the thing you want (the "known unknown"), you don't know what excel is capable of generally ("unknown unknowns").

Forums are good places to address discrete known unknown questions, but bad places to pin down the unknown unknowns. Your question and subsequent claims of helplessness means your question is really "teach me how to use excel". Not really feasible to help you here, both because it's hard to teach over a forum and this is generally something you should be taking a class or tutorial program on over an extended period of time.

Maybe somebody can suggest to you good training programs and guidebooks for excel?

xThanatoSx

"Excel for Dummies" I've found to be a good resource for learning excel and what it can do. OP, it's probably worth your time/money to get it if you're going to be doing more excel stuff for work.