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Is there a way to add a function to the customized status bar in Excel 2007?

I want to include a subtract method next to functions such as SUM, COUNT, AVERAGE, etc.

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I think the answers is 'No', though personally I would find this useful. One 'reason' would be that SUM is not order sensitive (1+3=3+1) but Subtract would be (1-3<>3-1). (Maybe Difference and accept answer will always be 'positive'?) –  pnuts Sep 18 '12 at 19:09
Also, SUM, COUNT, AVERAGE, MINIMUM, and MAXIMUM are all defined when more than two cells are selected -- DIFFERENCE would not be. –  Scott Sep 18 '12 at 19:26
@Scott I'd very happily settle for blanking out (like for example SUM does when only a single cell is selected) whenever more than two cells! –  pnuts Sep 19 '12 at 1:19
Yes, I figured it was not implemented due to the cell property constraints as mentioned by @pnuts. So I will have to find an alternate solution that could increase my worksheet productivity. Thanks for the feedback. –  Alex Sep 19 '12 at 13:57
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2 Answers

up vote 0 down vote accepted

Here's a workaround.  I took IBM's opening and closing stock prices for the month (from http://www.nasdaq.com/symbol/ibm/historical) and then duplicated the data in the negative:

            screen shot of Excel shhet with E4 = -B4, etc.

Now I can subtract any two numbers by selecting one and the negative of the other.  For example, IBM gained 57¢ in trading on 9/14:

            screen shot of same sheet with C11 and E11 (i.e., -B11) selected

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Excellent! so the hack will involve creating a macro that can convert a column to negative value? –  Alex Sep 20 '12 at 14:11
I've been fiddling with some of the function's in Excel and found the =IMSUB function which in contrast will just calculate the difference of two cells as long as they are real numbers. It would look like this for @Scott's example: =IMSUB(C11,B11) =>The output would be 0.57 only caveat is that would require another column in your workbook as oppose to the result appearing in the customized header. –  Alex Oct 10 '12 at 19:59
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Dick Kusleika addressed this in 2004, see here:


(look through the comments on the article too.) A drawback with this approach is that Excel's standard status messages are no longer visible.

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Interesting discussion thread. Thank you for sharing this information with us. –  Alex Sep 20 '12 at 14:29
- but unfortunately still not subtract/difference! –  pnuts Oct 10 '12 at 19:05
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