Ehsanul Haque

Tricks for MS Excel: Add a frozen header row and set alternate background colors for rows

Here are couple of tricks for MS Excel users.

First we take a look at how to add a “Frozen” header row. Frozen header row is the one you could have for a very long worksheet. This row will be frozen (to act as the column header) and rest of the rows will scroll. Here’s how to do this.

1. Select the row below the one you want to be the header (or be frozen)

2. From Window menu select Freeze Panes (for MS Excel 2007 click on the View tab and inside Window panel click on Freeze Panes and pick the first option which is also Freeze Panes)

The frozen row will have a border at the bottom. Simple but an essential option for MS Excel users.

Second trick is the alternate background color for rows in the MS Excel worksheet.

1. Select the rows

2. From the Format menu go to Conditional Formatting (or in MS Excel 2007 under Home tab click on Conditional Formatting from Styles panel and click on New Rule)

3. When the window appears select Formula Is… (or on MS Excel 2007 select the last option Use a Formula to Determine Which Cells to Format)

4. Add this formula: =mod(row(),2)=1

5. Then click on Format button and go to Fill tab

6. Pick the color that will be used as the alternate color

7. Hit OK and go back to the worksheet

You will see the worksheet has alternate background colors.

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Cannot start Microsoft Office Outlook. Cannot open the Outlook window.

Are you getting the error “Cannot start Microsoft Office Outlook. Cannot open the Outlook window.” when you try to open the MS Office Outlook? If you are then the quick and easy fix it to run the following command from Start > Run:

Outlook.exe /resetnavpane

This command should fix the problem with your MS Office Outlook. It worked for me on Windows XP SP2.

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How to delete a locked file in Windows?

Sometimes when you try to delete a file on Windows it says file cannot be delete as it is used by another program; you must close the program to delete the file. Well, almost all the time you actually know which program to close in order to delete the file (also rename the file). But today when I tried to delete a file (which was not open in any program nor did I use this file for over three months) Windows was showing the message. You cannot really say which program or process is using it. So I downloaded Process Explorer from Microsoft’s site which you can use to see which process or program is using the file you are trying to delete.

After you run the Process Explorer go to “Find” menu and click on “Find Handle or DLL …” (Ctrl+F). Type in the file name (full or partial) you are having trouble deleting or renaming and hit Search. Process Explorer will list all the processes or programs using this file. When I searched for the file I was having problem with it showed that the “Explorer” is using it! So what can I do in that case?

From “Task Manager” if I kill the “Explorer” process I cannot browse to the folder so using “Task Manager” I ran “Command Prompt” and from command line I changed directory to the desired location. Typed the command to delete the file “del filename.ext”. I was able to delete the file and then using “Task Manager” I started “Explorer” again. It was easy but “Process Manager” made it easy to find the process. So many hidden stuff that we have on Windows!

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