Custom Lists: A Working Exercise

The Custom Lists Tab of the Tools Options dialog box can save time and effort when entering labels that you frequently use such as department titles in your business.  Excel comes with a few of the most common lists pre programmed.  However, if you have a list of titles, headings, people names, places, etc. that you find yourself inputting over and over again you can add these labels to the pre defined custom lists.   

Notice below that you enter your list in the right frame and then click the “ADD” button to add it to your lists. As another option – if you already have the list created in an Excel workbook, you can simply highlight a range you have entered, select Tools/Options/Custom List and then import the highlighted range directly into your lists.  Lists can, of course, be deleted when no longer needed.

The Custom Lists Dialog Box

Once you create a custom list you can use auto fill to quickly and easily enter the labels in the list into any row or column.  Simply type any of the labels in the list and drag it down or across with the fill handle. In the screen below we see that our custom list of city names has been dragged downward.

Here are some example custom lists that you can try on your own: 

For a more advanced use of custom lists, try this. Highlight 2 or more cells, and then pull the data across or downward. You will see that the custom list will behave based on the trend you highlight, as shown in the examples below.

 

Finally, try this one on for size. Highlight a series of numbers and pull them to the right, as shown below. Doing this with three or more numbers will cause Excel to project the following numbers using Linear Progression – the Least Squares Method.

Consider for a moment how effective it might be to use your six preceding months of actual data to project your twelfth month income and expenses. Not only would this make for a fast projection method, but it would be based on highly scientific principles as well. See below for example.

For most CPAs who work with financial data, budgets, and projections - this is certainly something to think about.

If you want to give this a try yourself, you will have to create a custom list following the instructions provide above. Custom lists will not come across in a downloadable Excel file.

 - END -