Darren writes one of my favorite blogs – Problogger, it is a blog about blogging. It is super helpful for people like me who write, connect, share and sell online. A week back, Darren asked his readers to participate in a fun experiment by posting 7 links on their blogs. It seemed like an interesting idea, so I am chipping in.
1. My First Post on Excel: While this blog is in existence since 2004, I did not start writing about excel until 2006. My first post on excel is How to remove duplicates. This was not written on chandoo.org, but on my excel blog r1c1.blogspot.com which I later imported here.
2. The post I enjoyed writing most: Now, this is difficult to choose. Because, writing is not what I enjoy most. My enjoyment comes when an article generates a lot of conversation (comments, discussion on other blogs etc.). To that extent, the most enjoyed post is Become a Conditional Formatting Rockstar.
3. Post(s) that had great discussion: I am proud of our community here. Most of the posts generate quite a bit of discussion and sharing of ideas. Here is a list of posts that had lots of insightful comments:
- Do you know these double click tricks? – 86 comments
- Introduction to VLOOKUP, MATCH and OFFSET formulas – 75 comments
- Become a Conditional Formatting Rockstar – 180 comments
- Calculating Days Overlapped Between 2 sets of dates – 46 comments
- Childhood dream comes true – story of Chandoo.org – 86 comments
- Excel Keyboard Shortcuts – Open Thread – 66 comments [read followup Comprehensive list of keyboard shortcuts in Excel which consolidates all these shortcuts in to one post]
4. A post on someone else’s blog that I wish I’d written: 2 posts come to mind. First one is Debra’s unbelievably comprehensive collection of Pivot Table tips & tricks. Next one is Jon’s detailed overview of number formats in excel. Both of them are very well structured, highly sought after topics that I wish I had written. I refer to them every now and then when I am stuck and need help.
5. A post title that I am most proud of: Hands down it has to be Want to be a conditional formatting rock star? Read this. But I also like Twins, Clones and Duplicates – 6 Excel Shortcuts from an Excited Dad which I wrote from hospital room when I became dad to twins in Sept, 2009.
6. A post I wish more people had read: hmm, it could be the Date with my sheet – 10 tips on using date / time in Excel, which despite having a lot of tips, never really took off.
7. Most read post ever: It has to be the Gantt Charts – Project Management using Excel post. Written on June 16th, last year, the post attracted 150k page views so far, with 63 comments. The post also played a crucial role in 630+ sales of Project Management Templates.
One Question for you:
What is your most favorite post on Chandoo.org and why do you like it? Please share using comments.
PS: If you are not in mood for excel, here is something to get you excited. Some one calls me a bastard and it made me laugh. Find out why.
11 Responses to “Fix Incorrect Percentages with this Paste-Special Trick”
I've just taught yesterday to a colleague of mine how to convert amounts in local currency into another by pasting special the ROE.
great thing to know !!!
Chandoo - this is such a great trick and helps save time. If you don't use this shortcut, you have to take can create a formula where =(ref cell /100), copy that all the way down, covert it to a percentage and then copy/paste values to the original column. This does it all much faster. Nice job!
I was just asking peers yesterday if anyone know if an easy way to do this, I've been editing each cell and adding a % manually vs setting the cell to Percentage for months and just finally reached my wits end. What perfect timing! Thanks, great tip!
If it's just appearance you care about, another alternative is to use this custom number format:
0"%"
By adding the percent sign in quotes, it gets treated as text and won't do what you warned about here: "You can not just format the cells to % format either, excel shows 23 as 2300% then."
Dear Jon S. You are the reason I love the internet. 3 year old comments making my life easier.
Thank you.
Here is a quicker protocol.
Enter 10000% into the extra cell, copy this cell, select the range you need to convert to percentages, and use paste special > divide. Since the Paste > All option is selected, it not only divides by 10000% (i.e. 100), it also applies the % format to the cells being pasted on.
@Martin: That is another very good use of Divide / Multiply operations.
@Tony, @Jody: Thank you 🙂
@Jon S: Good one...
@Jon... now why didnt I think of that.. Excellent
Thank You so much. it is really helped me.
Big help...Thanks
Thanks. That really saved me a lot of time!
Is Show Formulas is turned on in the Formula Ribbon, it will stay in decimal form until that is turned off. Drove me batty for an hour until I just figured it out.