Showing info without using comment feature? Display text without using a macro?

[StargateFan]

I have a file I'm cleaning up that I will then email to a group.
There are very inexperienced Excel users there so I was hoping to make
life very easy for them. I took out all the tips and extra
information from one sheet because the text didn't allow for proper
sorting. It seems more appropriate to have the user access the info
only if they want to. But here I get stuck. My experience has shown
me that comments are not easily figured out by newbies. They really
don't know what to do with them without being explained. Also, no
matter where I put the comment, on sorting it could get sorted
elsewhere from an easily seen cell.

Alright, the next thing to do would be to have the info accessed with
a button with a question mark on it perhaps and the info would them
come up. But I need to send this to users with no macros to avoid the
whole macros issue so that wouldn't seem to work either.

I'm guessing here but I thought perhaps a hidden sheet with the info
could be accessed somehow if the user wanted to but without a macro?
I really don't know what to do. I looked at the data validation but I
didn't see anything that would serve.

I'm a newbie in this type of thing and the above was just an idea, but
perhaps there's a feature in Excel that I don't know about that would
work in this situation? Any other tip would we welcome.

Thanks.

 

[Guest]

How about Insert/Comment?
You can type comment info this way that will stay attached
to the cell you put it in. You can control whether the
comment is always visible or hidden until the mouse hovers
over the comment tick in the upper right corner of the
cell.
If this idea works for you, you can put a note at the top
of the sheet for your users with a sample comment so
they'll recognize them if they occur in other parts of the
sheet.

Hope this helps.

 

[Earl Kiosterud]

Fan,

You can use the Input Message of Data - Validation. In Settings, leave it
as "any value." Go to Input Message tab and type your message. The message
will appear whenever one of the cells is selected. I don't think sorting
will mess it up.

 

[StargateFan]

Fan,

You can use the Input Message of Data - Validation. In Settings, leave it
as "any value." Go to Input Message tab and type your message. The message
will appear whenever one of the cells is selected. I don't think sorting
will mess it up.

You're right, it doesn't seem to mess up when sorted. That is good.

But just to mention that although this does do the job and I'll have
to use instead of using a comment due to the sort protection it seems
to have, the trouble with it is that there is no visual clue for the
user that there is something there. This is a serious drawback which
I didn't know about until I tried using this. Too bad it doesn't put
an arrow or something like when I've used data validation with a list.
<sigh>

Comments are a bit better in this regard because at least there is a
little red, albeit nearly invisible at any screen resolution, triangle
at the upper right-hand corner of the cell. But since it gets sorted
out whenever something is added and one time ended at the bottom of
the sheet, it's not a terribly good solution either. <sigh>

All efforts to try to come up with a good but visual solution without
using macros and that wouldn't be sorted out haven't worked so I'm
just going to have to go with this data validation one. As I said,
too bad that when uses that that no self-evident or easy-to-understand
visual clue is created.

<sigh> Sometimes, I just wish there was an easier way to do things.
If only macros weren't such security risks but I'm sending them a
clean file without them just the same.

Thanks. I looked at that screen before when I was looking for a way
to use the box but didn't realize that it would work even if no item
selected in the Settings tab of the data validation box.

 

[StargateFan]

How about Insert/Comment?

Hi, thanks. As I mentioned in my original post, Comments not viable
solution.

But thanks anyway. Appreciate the thought.

 

[StargateFan]

You're right, it doesn't seem to mess up when sorted. That is good.

But just to mention that although this does do the job and I'll have
to use instead of using a comment due to the sort protection it seems
to have, the trouble with it is that there is no visual clue for the
user that there is something there. This is a serious drawback which
I didn't know about until I tried using this. Too bad it doesn't put
an arrow or something like when I've used data validation with a list.
<sigh>

Comments are a bit better in this regard because at least there is a
little red, albeit nearly invisible at any screen resolution, triangle
at the upper right-hand corner of the cell. But since it gets sorted
out whenever something is added and one time ended at the bottom of
the sheet, it's not a terribly good solution either. <sigh>

All efforts to try to come up with a good but visual solution without
using macros and that wouldn't be sorted out haven't worked so I'm
just going to have to go with this data validation one. As I said,
too bad that when uses that that no self-evident or easy-to-understand
visual clue is created.

[snip]

I ended up going with a quick and dirty solution. Nothing was working
at all satisfactorily, and I still don't like this solution, but it's
the best I could do - I put the comment in a separate sheet and
labelled the sheet hopefully clearly enough so that it still does the
job it was intended to do as a sort of disclaimer. Still, this way
I'm sure people won't miss it, which would happen if I used either a
comment or the data validation way. The comment because it gets
sorted out (and not everyone knows what that tiny little red triangle
means - I learned that only after TEN YEARS of using Excel and
stumbling upon it! <g>) and since the first real entry in the sheet
was a URL and the one beside is was a numbered cell, no really good
way to get user to click into the numbered one as data validation
doesn't leave any hint that it has anything other than the numbe rin
the cell. Granted, it doesn't get sorted out. And no sense to put it
with the hyperlinked cell either.

Thanks everyone for the tips, though.

I do know that the data validation input message trick will come in
handy in other applications in future, though.

 

[Cutter]

Have you considered using a hyperlink? Have a hyperlink beside the inf
in question that, when clicked on, takes them to a specific area on
second sheet within the same workbook

 

[StargateFan]

Have you considered using a hyperlink? Have a hyperlink beside the info
in question that, when clicked on, takes them to a specific area on a
second sheet within the same workbook.

Now that's clever! That's the type of workaround I love and an
example of nifty and creative thinking! Another new trick to tuck up
my sleeve! <lol>

I'm only guessing here but I believe the info could still be placed on
the same sheet, just out of the way and out of sight of the main data.
I don't believe there's much danger of the info being sorted out as
they'd be on totally different columns. I just don't know how to
hyperlink to a cell. But that should be easy enough to find if it's
straightforward enough (despite how often I seem to post, I _do_
google _first_! <g>). Should be easy enough to label the hyperlink
"Author Disclaimer" or some such thing. Kewl!

This has a lot of potential. Thanks for letting me in on the fact
that hyperlinking doesn't just mean opening up files and folders in
addition to URLs, but that cells can also be navigated to. I'd
naturallly put a link beside the blurb to navigate back to the main
part of the sheet.

I'll report back on how this goes.

 

[StargateFan]

Oh, well, d'uh!! Thanks for leading me to yet another solution. I
was just working on this hyperlink angle when I realized that if I
added an extra cell and have it saying "Click here for Author
Disclaimer", that I could also use that for a Data Validation
solution, too! <kicking self> I'll have to see which one works best.
The amount of text is a bit too much to fit in the data validation
input message box. Anyway, at least I have 2 workarounds now.

Thanks!