Watch Window: Save Yourself the CTL + Page Up/Down

I’m sure it has happened where you are working on an analysis, a template, or a report, and there is one thing which just refuses to work no matter how many changes you make.

You keep flipping back and forth between tabs, between workbooks, or scrolling along a page until you find the culprit yet again.

Screenshot from Microsoft Excel 365 - Watch Window Tool description

I was filled with copious amounts of awe and shame when I discovered the Watch Window tool.

All those times where I had been muttering under my breath at a cell whose formula wasn’t playing nicely with the rest of my work, where I wasted time and energy flipping, scrolling, and getting an extra coffee. I could have been making use of this wonderful addition to the Excel environment!

With this albeit simple tool all of that goes away.

The Watch Window tool can be found in the Formulas tab, under the Formula Auditing group.

You can add any set of cells to be ‘watched’, where they will then appear in the watch window. Showing you not only the final output of a cell, but the formula contained within it, and its location within the workbook.

Screenshot from Microsoft Excel 365 - Adding watched cells

To remove a watched cell is as simple as selecting it within the watch window, and hitting the delete watch button.

Screenshot from Microsoft Excel 365 - Deleting watched cells

Part of the utility of this tool is that it can be docked like any other toolbar within excel! Making it extremely versatile and gives you an unobstructed view of the rest of your work.

My personal preference is to dock the toolbar to the bottom of my workbooks whenever it is needed.

So simple to use, and more useful than many of the better known tools in our favourite green program, don’t forget to add it to your arsenal!

Especially useful when building a report, or testing different scenarios in a larger calculation, not having to switch between sheets to see your results is awesome. If you have named ranges in your document, the names will even populate next to the cell reference, meaning that you don’t even lose context for the information you are looking at.

Needless to say this tool is now a part of my routine and something which I will continue to recommend for all users.

I hope you learned about something new today, and thanks for reading!