Clever Clogs tip # 753
1 April 2025


How to disable Table Formulas and use regular Excel Formulas instead (Microsoft Excel) *

Hello and welcome to April... time for another Clever Clogs tip. Yes, I know I usually send these on the first Tuesday of the month (after nearly weekly emails from 2003 to 2023) but hey - today's as good a day as any. Unless, of course, you think this tip is an April Fool's joke? (Spoiler alert: it isn't.) This month's tip: how to ditch those (in my opinion) confusing Table Formulas.

Somebody who attended a recent Excel training session recently told me this tip alone made the course worth attending (he had avoided using Tables altogether) so I figured it was about time to share it with you too.

So, where do you stand? Are you on Team Table Formulas (technically called "Structured References", but let's skip the jargon)...

... or do you (like me) prefer good old-fashioned regular formulas?

Here's how to disable the Table Formulas:

  1. On the File tab, click Options.
  2. Type the letter F (or click Formulas).
  3. Untick Use table names in formulae.
  4. Press ENTER or click OK.

This setting only affects new or edited formulas, so existing formulas will remain unchanged.

By the way, the client who hired me to deliver the training shared the feedback from that session (in a spreadsheet, of course ;) and I normally simply save this in my "happy" folder. But last week I took it a step further following Rosie Wareham's brilliant trick on LinkedIn for giving yourself a well-deserved confidence boost. Here's what she suggested:

  1. Copy and paste everything people have said about working with you into your favourite AI tool.
  2. Ask it: What does it feel like to work with me?

Intrigued, I decided to test it out on the feedback spreadsheet from the session. Here's what happened...

Thanks for the tip, Rosie! So much better than blowing your own trumpet! ;)

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K.

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* Unless stated otherwise this tip is written for Microsoft 365 desktop apps and Windows 11 users, but might also be useful in Office 2010, 2013, 2016 and 2019.