Microsoft Excel is loaded with features that are often ignored. Here’s a terrific feature that very few people use that can be extremely powerful and a great timesaver for you. It can eliminate a lot of going back and forth. It can make it easier for you to get to the values and the results that you want to achieve in the spreadsheet.

I can’t recall if this was available in the prior version of Excel, but in Excel 2007, it’s out there as an icon and easy to use and put in place. What is the feature?

The watch feature.

This feature allows you to keep a watch on how a particular value changes as you make changes in formula. For example, maybe you want to track the change in net income based on changes in your financial plan. To do so you would setup a new watch tracking that net income value. This would then be captured in a small window that would reside on top of your spreadsheet. You can move around this window and resize it to meet your pleasure.

The beauty is now this window will still remain even when you move around to different sheets. Think of what this does for you:

1. It can save you from having to scroll up and down when you have a very large worksheet and save you from having to, perhaps, re-split or change a layout of your sheet.

2. When you have multiple sheets in your file, it can save you from having to flip back and for between sheets.

So, fire up the watch window capability in Excel to keep track on key numbers that you want to track changes in values on. Do this and you’ll watch yourself become much more productive.