Excel Advent Calendar 2015

Mynda Treacy

November 24, 2015

Around this time last Year I created an Advent Calendar in Excel:

Excel Advent Calendar 2015

To Count Up or To Count Down?

Now, for me an Advent Calendar had always counted down to Christmas day, but to my surprise some people counted up, or rather counted the dates. That is they read the numbers on the calendar as the date as opposed to the number of days until Christmas.

So in the spirit of giving, this year I have created two calendars; one for those who want to count up and one for those who want to count down. I know, generous eh!

They're not those chocolate/candy filled calendars though, plus you actually have to do a bit of work to open the doors. It's nothing too Grinch inspired, just some fun Excel trivia to test your knowledge. Any tips you learn are my Christmas gift to you 😉

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Security Warnings

When you open the file make sure you Enable Editing and then Enable Content by clicking on the yellow messages above the formula bar like this one:

Enable Content warning

How it was made

The calendar is not password protected so feel free to pull it apart and learn how it works. Here's a list of the techniques I used and links to tutorials on those topics to help you get started:

Shapes and Images

Excel Tables

Radio Buttons

Combo Boxes

IF formulas

Nested IF formulas

CHOOSE formulas

VLOOKUP formulas

MATCH formulas

INDEX formulas

And some magical VBA!

More Excel Advent Calendars

If you want more Excel trivia frivolities then check out these (VBA Based) Excel Advent Calendars by Spreadsheet1.com and friends. Plus they're running an Advent Calendar contest where you can try your luck.

AUTHOR Mynda Treacy Co-Founder / Owner at My Online Training Hub

CIMA qualified Accountant with over 25 years experience in roles such as Global IT Financial Controller for investment banking firms Barclays Capital and NatWest Markets.

Mynda has been awarded Microsoft MVP status every year since 2014 for her expertise and contributions to educating people about Microsoft Excel.

Mynda teaches several courses here at MOTH including Excel Expert, Excel Dashboards, Power BI, Power Query and Power Pivot.

5 thoughts on “Excel Advent Calendar 2015”

  1. Good morning, everybody, my name is Maurice and I have a problem that I would like to solve in VBA. The problem is this: in an Excel form with office 2007, I entered this code:

    Private Sub Cmd_Apri_Telefonata_Click()
    ‘On Error Resume Next
    Call PhoneCall(PhoneNumber, DestName, Comment)
    End Sub

    Private Declare Function TapiRequestMakeCall Lib “Tapi31.DLL” (ByVal Dest As String, _
    ByVal AppName As String, ByVal CalledParty As String, ByVal Comment As String) As Long

    Function PhoneCall(ByVal PhoneNumber As String, ByVal DestName As String, _
    Optional ByVal Comment As String) As Boolean

    ‘On Error Resume Next

    If TapiRequestMakeCall(VBA.Trim$(PhoneNumber), App.Title, VBA.Trim$(DestName), Comment) = 0 Then
    PhoneCall = True
    ‘foglio1.range(“F1″).Value=””
    End If
    End Function

    Now this code should afford associated with a cell, which in my case is: Sheet1. range (“F1”). Value = “” where I put in a phone number that will change from time to time.
    But while not giving me any error apparent, I can’t get it to work; That’s why I ask you kindly to you self you could give me a hand in changing this Windows API so that it can function in VBA.
    Thank you in advance for any help you can give me about; Sincere greetings from a. Maurizio

    Reply
  2. Hi Mynda

    Many thanks for this year’s advent calendar. I’ve downloaded it, checked it’s definitely an xlsm files and clicked on both the ‘enable editing’ and ‘enable content’ messages but am unable to tick the answer boxes. I just get the mouse pointer as if it’s in Edit mode. Can you help please?

    Reply
    • Hi Catherine,

      Sorry you’re having trouble using the calendar file. Are you able to send me a screenshot of the whole Excel window so I can see what you see after clicking Enable etc. You can upload it via the Help Desk.

      Hopefully that might give me some clues as to what the problem is.

      Thanks,

      Mynda

      Reply
  3. UPDATE: VBA Chord Diagram with Hierarchical Edge Bundling

    This VBA chord diagram demonstrates a graphical method of displaying the inter-relationships between code procedures in the Advent Calendar VBA project powered by Ribbon Commander. The data is arranged radially around a circle with the relationships between the points drawn as arcs connecting the procedures together. The project name, module type and name is shown at the bottom of the chart when the mouse pointer hovers over a VBA procedure

    Reply

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