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Favourite Free Excel Add-ins
Excel has some powerful features, but it's not perfect.
I use a few free add-ins that make Excel even better, and asked other people what free add-ins they use, and would recommend.
Here's the list, starting with my favourites. Maybe you'll see a few that you can download and install, and make working in Excel a bit easier.
My Favourite Free Excel Add-ins
Excel Utilities
This add-in, developed by Rob Bovey of AppsPro, has handy tools for working with named ranges, worksheets and selections.
With the Excel Utilities commands, you can quickly protect and unprotect all the sheets in a workbook, remove unused styles, or centre across a selection, without merging cells.
There are too many features to list here. Read the full description on Rob’s page for Excel Utilities.
Name Manager
The Name Manager, by Jan Karel Pieterse of JKP Application Development Services, is much better than the Name features that come with Excel.
If you use names in Excel, you'll appreciate the Name Manager. Find names with errors and delete them, or track names that link to another workbook.
Take a couple of minutes to download Name Manager, and you'll be amazed by how much time and frustration it can save you.
Pivot Power
I do lots of work with pivot tables, so I created my own pivot table add-in, Pivot Power, that you can download. The commands that I use most often are Clear Old Data, and Sum All Data.
More Free Add-ins for Excel
Here are some of the other recommended free Excel add-ins. Please read the terms of use for these utilities, before you install them. Some are free for personal use, but might require a licence for commercial use.
- ASAP Utilities
- Rob Bovey's Code Cleaner
- Rob Bovey's Chart Labeler
- MZ Tools
- FindLink by Excel MVP Bill Manville
- AutoSafe from Jan Karel Pieterse
- FlexFind from Jan Karel Pieterse
- Andy Pope's Button Editor
- JMT Utilities
- Thesaurus for Excel
- Ken Puls' XLG Favourites
- Change Series Formula by Jon Peltier
- Ultimate Add-in
- Navigator Utilities
Thanks to everyone who contributed to the discussion: sam, Mathias, Patrick O'Beirne, Bob Phillips, Ross, JP, Jon Peltier, Jim Cone, Bob R, Jason Morin, Shahbaz, and Barbara.
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