Watching Your Cells

Excel 2002 has a new feature, the Watch window, which allows you to monitor cells that might be out of your visual range on a large worksheet.

For example, the worksheet below contains a beginning balance, revenues and expenditures, and an ending balance. Any change made to the revenues and expenditures will naturally affect the ending balance, however, that cell is out of view.

To monitor a cell using the Watch window, right click in the cell and select Add Watch from the shortcut menu.

The Watch window displays:

The window contains the name of the workbook, worksheet, the cell name (if applicable), the cell reference, the cell contents, and the formula that affects the cell. If you make a change to any cell that affects the watched cell, the change is automatically reflected in the Watch window.

To add cells to the Watch window, either right click on the cell and select Add Watch. You can also add a cell by selecting Add Watch in the Watch window, then clicking in the desired cell and clicking OK. To remove a cell from the watch window, select the cell in the watch window then click Delete Watch.

Anchoring the Watch Window

The watch window can be anchored to a location on your worksheet and resized so that it takes up less space on the screen. To anchor the watch window, drag it to the bottom or side of your worksheet and release the mouse button when the shape of the window changes, as in the example below. If you want to “unanchor” the window, double click its title bar.

Changing the Column Size

Along with anchoring the watch window, you can change the size of any column in the watch window by clicking on the column divider and dragging right or left (just like you would change the column size in an Excel worksheet). In the example below, I dragged the column dividers to hide all columns but the column name and the amount.

Additional Information

§ If you close the watch window, you can re-open it by right clicking on any Excel toolbar and selecting “Watch Window” from the shortcut menu. Even if you close the watch window, the cells are still monitored until you delete them from the watch window.

§ Double clicking on any cell in the watch window will take you to that cell in the worksheet.

§ You can sort items in the watch window by clicking on the column headings