You Might Be an Excel Nerd If...

These are the entries in a contest on my Contextures blog, with the theme "You might be an Excel nerd if..."

You might be an Excel nerd if...

There were lots of great entries, from the people who know Excel nerds best -- other Excel nerds! Yes, we're nerdy, and proud of it. Thanks for all the contributions!

And here are all the entries, with the contributors' names and website link (if they included that in the comment). Although each person was limited to one official entry, some people couldn't resist offering a few signs that you might be an Excel nerd.

--the majority of your toolbar buttons are self-drawn. -- Grigori Shevchenko

--more than one of your Twitter and/or 'friends' are Excel Nerds -- Tony Huby

--you own a copy of a book authored by Debra Dalgleish -- Kurt Trinko

--Long-lost friends call you, not for a beer or company, but for Excel help, ALL THE TIME! -- govi

--you have written none but read at least 2 books on Pivot tables -- govi

--You assess romantic potential in a person based on their ability to create a pivot table in under 60 seconds -- Viv

--You methodically (and lovingly) archived your old personal (home) budgets in Excel 2003 .xls after saving new copies in 2007 .xlsx format -- Viv

--You offered to produce a "best baby name" generator for your 9-month pregnant friend using formulae and tables in Excel -- Viv

--the first thing you do when you turn your computer on is read all the Excel daily blogs and decided how you can use your new knowledge. -- Christine McManus

--vlookups are under your hobbies on facebook. wow. -- Jamie

--your wife tells you your mistress is "Excelina". -- Andy Post

-- =IF(ISERROR(INDEX(Nerd_List,MATCH(ME1,Excel_Users,0))),"Phew!","Ah!") -- Alastair

--no one in the office knows your name but rather call you "Excel Guy" to your face. -- Michael

--You write VBA code that logs your wife's contractions start and end times to keep score how much time they are apart -- Jan Karel Pieterse

--you know at least two alternatives to VLOOKUP. Super nerd status is reserved for those who know three. -- JP

--Excel reminds you of your Wife and Children's birthdays, and what gifts they got for the last 3 years -- Hui...

--your kids are named "Index" and "Match". -- Mike Alexander

--you spit out "65,536? before someone can finish asking you, "How many rows in a worksheet?" Then when they ask you if that can be expanded, you fall out of your chair laughing (this was before the release of 2007 of course!) -- Jason Morin

--you celebrated July 6, 2009 as a milestone day. -- Harry

--you're actually looking forward to reading one or more of the books in the give away. -- AnnaLisa Lawson

--You might be an Excel nerd like me if you dream you are wallpapering all your house with excel spreadsheets wallpaper and then write data on the walls and functions and expect to touch the wallpaper so that the function does the calculation…. -- Gabriela

--you understand (and appreciate) those VBA error messages, like "Automation error". -- L. Quezada

--you enjoy going to work everyday! -- Blayne

--you have more than 5 excel blogs in your RSS feed…. -- CraigM

--your favorite video game is the flight simulator Easter egg in Excel 97. -- Dean

--you ABSolutely MATCH every ADDRESS EXACTly when sitting in your CELL looking at the CEILING before you CHOOSE to CLEAN the FLOOR. This behaviour has a LARGE EFFECT on your GROWTH, which is TRUE, EVEN IF ODD, when carried out each WEEKDAY OF each MONTH -- Roger Govier

--your home page is: https://www.contextures.com/tiptech.html -- Dave

--you drive a car with XLNERD plates. Duh! :)) -- Biff

--you know more than 10 keyboard shortcut chains e.g., Alt+e+s+v -- Sridhar Baldava

--when you look for games to play online, you look first for versions in Excel. -- Jayson

--you feel an urge to correct your coworkers' plural of "formulas" when they instant-message you for help.} -- Brian S

--you get excited about finding a valid use for circular references in your formulae. (…just found the timestamping article at Chandoo's site. SO COOL.) -- Brian S

--a copy of Excel is always open so you can quickly calculate 7463/12 or whatever comes up during the work day. -- teylyn

--you list of add-ins is three screens long. -- teylyn

--You use Match()& Index() instead of Vlookup(). -- Doug

--You have a list of all your favorite authors books and then have data validation that removes them from the list as your purchase/read them. (Same for your grocery list) -- Trixie

--Your co-workers have just dubbed you "The Excel Empress" -- Trixie

--Your new kitten's name is Macro -- Trixie

--You conjure up an array formula when not needed because it is fantastically cool and incomprehensible to others. -- Andy Holaday

--you have a favorite Excel error. (error 49 is almost poetic) -- Jim Cone

--you read all 37 comments to Summer Giveaway For Excel Nerds. Oops - now 38. -- AlexJ

--you have to make a hex editor in Excel just to see if it is possible, and of course it was, as everything. -- Roger

--you write a VBA macro to help you decide where to go for lunch. -- dewey1973

--you have more than one version of Excel on your machine together with a copy of Lotus 123 for comparison -- Tony Huby

--you enter this comp twice …(or even three times)!! -- Tony Huby

--you used conditional formatting to personalize your wedding invitations. -- Dan

--you, without thinking, start to reformat every spreadsheet on opening, even when the owner just wants you to look at one formula. -- cg

--It hurts to take a break because you'll be away from your beloved Excel project -- Ron

--Using Excel is a "pleasurable" diversion from other important tasks -- Ron

--You have at least two dog-eared Excel "Bibles" -- Ron

--You subscribe to three or more Excel Forums and use a tabbed browser so you can be on-line at all of them at the same time -- Ron

--you've hidden columns to spell your name with column headers. You probably are if you print screened it. You are if the print is on your door and no one understands how beautiful it really is. -- Harald Staff

--you commit white collar crime so you can spend the rest of your life in a Cell wondering if your VBA color picker could change the Interior.Colorindex -- Tim Buckingham

--you look over a colleague's shoulder at an Excel model they have created, and no matter how proficient they are, you KNOW you could do it better. -- David Coop

--you just bought not 1 but 2 of the I love Excel coffee mug from the Amazon advertising on the top of this site -- Tim Buckingham

--you can create an add-in that can bring back menus and toolbars in Excel 2007/10 -- sam

--using Indirect reminds you of programming in 8086 assembler Back In The Day if you tilt your head way over to the side and squint a bit -- CO

--you just can't understand why your boss and co-workers don't get as excited as you do when you tell them that using Indirect reminds you of in 8086 assembler Back In The Day if you tilt your head way over to the side and squint a bit -- CO

--you have Debra Dalgleish picture as a screen saver and having your wife keep saying who's that? -- Frederick Chidester

--you talk in your sleep how Debra Dalgleish made a 2-4-6 ball break into the corner and side pockets on the Bullard table. -- Frederick Chidester

--your wife finds you sitting on the john at 3 AM working on your laptop because you just figured out how to use one of Mike Alexander's functions to do some work for the office in the morning. -- Frederick Chidester

--Using Excel to figure out your lunch tab plus tip. -- Frederick Chidester

--you used Excel to figure out the exact day on which your wife had been married to you longer than she was single and you took her out to dinner to welcome her to the family. -- Rod Apfelbeck

--you compile Excel-themed tweets on a weekly basis :). Or if you read them religiously. -- Doug Glancy

--you rejoice sending your boss a worksheet plagued with nested functions simply because he is excelblind. -- Pablo

--you write IDE's for other programming languages in Excel using VBA and conditional formatting. -- Brett

--you wrote this contest entry in Excel and posted using SendKeys… -- Brett

--You ARE an Excel Nerd if your fiancé was able to use the database to decide on a honeymoon destination! -- Brett

--you impressed your travel agent by already having a cataloged database of all 150+ Sandals resorts including price quotes, descriptions, and pictures. -- Brett

--you used that database to plan your honeymoon. -- Brett

--you still say "at" before Excel worksheet functions. @SUM, @VLOOKUP, @IF -- Dick Kusleika

--you spend all day googling for excel sites -- JIM H

--you alert your doctor to your "Daily Dose of Excel" as part of your list of medications. -- Jake

--you spend Friday night entering contests on XL blogs. -- Patrick

--You are the only one in your office that can use a spreadsheet you created because you used YEARFRAC and are the only one that has installed the analysis ToolPak. -- Mike M.

--you use an Excel random number generator to select the winner for the Excel Nerd contest? -- AlexJ

--you always does! (Hope this one wasn't too tricky :-) -- Dan Elgaard

--you always wear Ribbons - party or not :-) -- Dan Elgaard

--you have a shortcut to Excel in your "Startup" program group! -- Dan Elgaard

--you're considering suing Obama for stealing the slogan, "Yes we can", from your VBA courses!!! -- Dan Elgaard

--you're convinced that the beginning of time was 01.01.1900! -- Dan Elgaard

--you're still waiting for the 65536 x 256 - 1 sequels to the movie, "The Cell". -- Dan Elgaard

--your favorite actor is Val(Kilmer). -- Dan Elgaard

--your household finances are run as Macro economy! -- Dan Elgaard

--your wardrobe only contains clothes in 54 different color indexes! -- Dan Elgaard

--you spend 20 minutes writing a VBA procedure to do something you could have done by hand in 2 minutes and don't think that was a waste of time. -- Nick

--you almost cannot function on someone else's computer without your extensively customized toolbars (pre XL07, of course) -- dcardno

--you almost cannot function on XL07 -- dcardno

--you are baffled when co-workers don't understand your references to Walkenbach, Peltier, Pieterse, or Bullen when discussing an Excel problem -- dcardno

--you deliberately send a softcopy of an analysis - not to inform, but to intimidate -- dcardno

--you participate on help forums, but don't bother to help on many questions because they just won't be interesting enough -- dcardno

--excel is your favorite query on google; youtube;yahoo; and if you can make pivot table without using your mouse but only with your keyboard! -- gagner

-- =CHAR(89) & CHAR(111) & CHAR(117) & CHAR(32) & CHAR(109) & CHAR(105) & CHAR(103) & CHAR(104) & CHAR(116) & CHAR(32) & CHAR(98) & CHAR(101) & CHAR(32) & CHAR(97) & CHAR(110) & CHAR(32) & CHAR(69) & CHAR(120) & CHAR(99) & CHAR(101) & CHAR(108) & CHAR(32) & CHAR(110) & CHAR(101) & CHAR(114) & CHAR(100) & CHAR(32) & CHAR(105) & CHAR(102) & CHAR(32) & CHAR(121) & CHAR(111) & CHAR(117) & CHAR(32) & CHAR(99) & CHAR(97) & CHAR(110) & CHAR(32) & CHAR(114) & CHAR(101) & CHAR(97) & CHAR(100) & CHAR(32) & CHAR(116) & CHAR(104) & CHAR(105) & CHAR(115) & CHAR(32) & CHAR(119) & CHAR(105) & CHAR(116) & CHAR(104) & CHAR(111) & CHAR(117) & CHAR(116) & CHAR(32) & CHAR(101) & CHAR(110) & CHAR(116) & CHAR(101) & CHAR(114) & CHAR(105) & CHAR(110) & CHAR(103) & CHAR(32) & CHAR(105) & CHAR(116) & CHAR(32) & CHAR(105) & CHAR(110) & CHAR(32) & CHAR(97) & CHAR(32) & CHAR(99) & CHAR(101) & CHAR(108) & CHAR(108) & CHAR(32) & CHAR(102) & CHAR(105) & CHAR(114) & CHAR(115) & CHAR(116) -- Jeff Weir

--you prefer being called "Excel Guru" rather than your name! -- Hamilton

--you use one line "for each…next" code in the immediate window. -- Nick O-P

--you see your colleagues' spreadsheets and thinks…"hmmph…what an amateur". -- ShawnL

--(not to mention single) you skipped your last wedding anniversary celebration to attend the Excel MVP summit. -- Colin Banfield

--at 1:00 a.m. you camp out at your local bookstore so that you can be first in line to own the just released copy of Excel 2010 PivotTables Recipes. -- Colin Banfield

--the first thing you pack for your 3 week Caribbean vacation is your vast collection of Excel books and utilities. -- Colin Banfield

--you already own a copy of all of the books and utilities offered here as contest giveaways. -- Colin Banfield

--you can recall the names of all the developers who worked on Excel v2.0. -- Colin Banfield

--you devote an entire room in your house for Excel memorabilia. -- Colin Banfield

--you devote the rest of your life to ensure that your kids attain the status of Excel MVP. -- Colin Banfield

--you donate your entire lottery windfall to the Excel development team. -- Colin Banfield

--you engrave your 25th anniversary present to your spouse "Love always to you…and Excel." -- Colin Banfield

--you own every book written for Excel, dating back to Excel v2.0. -- Colin Banfield

--you read more Excel books than your spouse read novels. -- Colin Banfield

--you sell your Porsche to attend a Peltier/Alexander boot camp. -- Colin Banfield

--you sign all your wife's birthday and Christmas cards "Love from your one and only Excel Sweetie." -- Colin Banfield

--you've an apologist for Microsoft every time they screw up something in a new release of Excel. -- Colin Banfield

--your kids are named Walkenbach, Dalgleish, Peltier, Kusleika, Alexander, Gelder, Bullen, Jelen, Bovey, Pieterse, and Pope (so far). -- Colin Banfield

--your Windows wallpaper is created in Excel and set up to export and update the image daily. -- chip

--when you're bored you write a bitmap to ActiveSheet renderer… -- mark nold

--you leave a comment just to be in the running for cool Excel prizes. -- Matt Lanagan

--you consider MS Access to be an Excel-add-on to overcome the 65536-rows issue. -- Timothy Vandenbussche

--you think that buying the second edition of Professional Excel Development as soon as it comes out for your wife makes a good present. -- David Jessop

--you don't need any of those books! -- Francesco Giossi

--Excel is the only part of MS Office installed -- Tony Huby

--you are not interested in the post-processing capacities of your engineering software, as - by default - you will export your results as raw data and write a custom add-in for processing and visualisation. -- Gerrit

--you worry that some terrible accident has happened to your favourite MVP when his/her blog is not updated for days without prior notice .. you write him/her an email expressing your concern and wishing him/her the best of health and quick recovery .. you receive a kind reply not to worry….you are terribly honoured by this reply and boast around about your contact with the well-known Excel MVP -- Gerrit

--you used Excel to calculate the exact day on which your family - that is: summed ages of all family members - equals 100 years old. -- Gerrit

--you know exactly how (in Excel) *you* would filter the multiple entries in this contest before making the draw -- Gerrit

--you view the drive home from work as an inconvenient disruption in your Excel productivity. -- James Jordin

--you'd rather 'Right Click > Export to Microsoft Excel' than read it in Internet Explorer* (*even if your 'IT' department allows you to install Firefox) -- James Jordin

--you've created a Google Custom Search called 'My Excel Search'. -- James Jordin

--in a software company of over 3000 employees, you're known as the Excel Macro Guy. -- Nic

--your wife refers to it as the 'other' woman in your life and your dog gives you dirty looks every time you open a spreadsheet! -- Ajay

--you keep Excel 2003 around by choice because of the charting capabilities and can explain why. Bonus points if you've written a blog article about it… -- Michael Pierce

--you view Excel as your software development platform of choice. -- Michael Pierce

--You know you are an Excel geek if you name your children after Excel functions. Some of my favorite might be: LEN, MINA (pronounced MEENA similar to Tina), ACOS, HARMEAN, RAND, COSH, DELTA, ABS, and maybe the best…ERF -- willwonka

--your work won't allow you to install games, so you write your own in Excel. -- Josh Grilly

--your bedding material has a 1,048,576 by 16,385 grid printed on it and your name in the A1 cell. -- Erik Anderson

--you're *really* attracted to that special someone because "her Excel skills rock…" -- Kevin DeWhitt

--you've set up a 'game of life' simulation in Excel… then expanded the formulas to see just how large to can make it before it crashes. -- Rick Williams

--you can decode the key sequence: Shift+Space Ctrl+C Up Ctrl++ Alt+E,S,V Shift+Down Alt+O,D. -- Rick Williams

--you have an A3 page on your wall, printed in size 4 font, a comprehensive matrix of all keyboard shortcuts in Excel03/07. -- Rick Williams

--you see the real challenge in Sudoku's as being able to code a solver in Excel. -- Rick Williams

--your spouse enters a contest boasting about your Excel skills. -- Elisabeth DeWhitt

--You're an excel nerd if you tend to get cross with colleagues that omit ,0 from their index(match(,,)) -- ikkeman

--your class-based error handling is 10x as complex as your application code because of your fear of VBA memory leaks… -- Bruce

--Daily Dose of Excel is your browser's home page. -- Tom

--you consider creating your own personal finance software in excel to be not only preferable to using quicken, but a crowning personal achievement. -- Ryan

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Summer Giveaway for Excel Nerds Winners

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