This is the story of Vijay Agarwal, who received MVP Award from Microsoft on 1st of April.
Some of you know that I am a recipient Microsoft MVP award. It is an award Microsoft gives to software community leaders & contributors. Often people ask me, “Chandoo, how do I become an MVP?”. So today I want to tell you how you can become an MVP.
Around first week of April, I got an email from Vijay,
Hi Chandoo,
My self Vijay Agarwal from Delhi and I am a big fan of your site/articles. With blessing of God and inspiration from legends like you, I am pleased to inform you that yesterday evening I have been awarded Most Valuable Professional (MVP) award by Microsoft for my contributions in Excel.
This is the link of Microsoft site where it has been updated.
I congratulated him immediately. It is always a pleasure to see people succeed and get recognition for their efforts. I also asked him if he can share his MVP journey to inspire all of us at Chandoo.org. Vijay being an awesome guy, wrote and send it promptly. So here we go.
My ‘MVP’ Journey
1st April 2014, the day, which I would never forget in my life as Microsoft has awarded me Most Valuable Profession Award (MVP) for my Excel skills which undoubtedly is the ‘Nobel Prize’ in Microsoft community.
Can a person ever think of such a feat…,
- who spent his childhood in a very small town of Haryana (a state in India)
- who completed his graduation in Hindi medium only
- who never heard or saw a computer before his graduation
- who touched a computer only after completing his CA in 1993
Really really it’s a long story, how and when I fall in love with Excel even I don’t remember. I believe it was 1998. Being a Chartered Accountant and good in mathematics/logic I found myself spending more and more time on it and within few months, I was the ‘Excel master’ in my company. I never had any type of training on any of MS product, whatever I learn that was just by reading Excel help (its too good, that is written by experts, never ignore it), doing and doing and helping others. In the mean time, I moved to ERP/SAP line and also got lot of proficiency there, but, yes Excel was always with me. Till 2009, I used to get people coming to me for Excel queries, and used to got calls from my colleagues of previous companies.
I was not much involved on any type of forums on internet till 2009, then I became one of the members on http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/office in 2010 and started to see people answering very tough/complicated questions. There are people who are more experienced and legends on these forums and moreover very good in Macros, me not a technical person, I hardly used macros, but being good in logic I started to answer questions even which people thought is possible through macros only, by building logic and providing non-macro solutions. It was not frequent, but my response also got “marked as answer”, and it was in 2012 last quarter that I was tagged as Star Contributor, after that I just got addicted to solve more and more questions, and the result is in front of you.
I don’t prefer Macro/array solutions much and always try to find some simple Non macro/non Array solutions which I believe users like.
I remember one quote of Steve Jobs here.
“Simple can be harder than complex: You have to work hard to get your thinking clean to make it simple. But it’s worth it in the end because once you get there, you can move mountains.”
While answering questions I try to make things simple and follow these rules.
- Will my solution meet the requirement of user
- Can it be more simplified/compact and made better
- Is there any alternate solution for this
- Is it user friendly
- Would it be better to provide Screen shots/File Link
- To the point/brief
- And then I try to follow all above rules while answering questions
I believe one should have passion/belief for a subject and then he will automatically find the time/ways for it. MVP is not the destination; I do it because I love it. It gives lot of satisfaction when one get compliments for your responses. There is no short cut to hard work. Do what you love and love what you do so that you don’t feel bored/burdened.
Beside Excel I am fond of yoga, give motivational speeches and travel.
I am thankful to God for giving me such a beautiful life.
Wish you all the best and feel free to get in touch with me thru my MVP page or Microsoft Answers page.
Thank you very much Chandoo for giving me an opportunity to write on your blog.
I learnt and learning a lot from Chandoo.org
keep it up, God bless you.
Thank you Vijay
Thanks Vijay for sharing your story and inspiring us. I agree with you that as long as we make our life about learning & sharing, it will be challenging and beautiful. Thanks for taking time to write for us. Many congratulations once again on the much deserved MVP award. Wishing you many more years as MVP.
If you enjoy Vijay’s story, please say thanks to him or congratulate him.
More on MVP Award
- Chandoo becomes MVP
- Hui becomes MVP
- Microsoft MVP Award website
- Chandoo.org Forum (to share your knowledge or ask a question)
37 Responses to “Quickly Change Formulas Using Find / Replace”
Chandoo,
this is a really cool stuff what I use quite often. In addtion this method also could be a good choice to switch the reference type of the formulas from relative to absolute or vice versa. (just simply replace the $ in the same way).
Andras
@Andras: you are right, we can use find / replace to change references, reference types etc. Now, only if they had regex in find/ replace, we could so much more 🙂
@Tony Rose: Thank you. This is very useful and powerful feature. I even use it for cleaning up data. While formulas are good, they are not the solution for every problem. Often when I need more powerful cleanup / changing, I copy paste the stuff to text editors like notepad++ and then use their find/replace to do the dirty task.
What if i have to change the formula from ='Analysis'!C1 to 'Analysis 1'!C1?
I tried doing it using Find /Replace but could't. Encountered some errors.
And is there a way to change this using VBA???
Hi,
Did you ever get a reply to this?
Thanks
Ollie
to make your life easier, suggest you to avoid (Space) in worksheet names whenever possible. Consider (underscore) instead.
As the first formula wouldn't have the single apostrophes (since there's no space) need to include that in replace. So, search for:
Analysis
and replace with:
'Analysis 1'
This could be the most useful tips I've seen in a while. I use this all the time and can instantly change 400 formulas with a few clicks. Like so many other functions in Excel, I don't know what I would do without this one.
Keep 'em coming!
[...] on formulas: 5 areas where mouse kicks keyboard’s butt | Edit formulas in bulk using Find / Replace | Excel Formulas Online [...]
THANKS BRO
You, sir, are a god among men...
This is really cool. Your just save me hours of work. Thanks.
Thanks so much for this fix! It saved me tons of work. I'm muddling my way through and this really helped!
Oh... My... God!
This tip just saved me about 2 hours every month! I can't believe how easy it is to use. Now, can somebody tell me who I should call to get a refund for the previous 100 hours I spent manually changing formulas cell by cell?
Thanks so much!
THANK YOU!!!
THANK YOU!!!!
You saved me hours, I had a sheet that has more than 500 formulas, and i needed to replace the year in all of them, you saved me hours
Awesome info on replacing cell addresses in formulas. I have never heard about Ctrl+` before. Thank you!
I have something inside a formula like:
=sum(A1, A2*10) all over I now need to get rid of the *10 {=sume(A1, A2)} I thought to use the find replace trick above but with a blank in the replace but it then outputs just zeros. I thought I could trick it by doing *1 but then it just turns into =*1) with none of my references. Does anyone have an idea how to do this?
The Ctrl+ trick is cool.
@T
Instead of replacing with a blank try replacing
*10)
with
)
Thank you! This literally will save me hours and hours of time, and that's without losing my sanity in the process!
I have Sheet(1), Sheet(2), Sheet(3), etc ... Sheet(100).
Then there's a summary tab where I want to recap information on all those different sheets. Is there anyway to create a formula on the Summary tab to get ='Sheet(1)'!B$29 copied down for all 100 sheets without having to change each sheet # within the formula by hand?
@Brigitte
If you have a list of the sheet names in A2:A100
In B2: =INDIRECT("'"&A2&"'!$B$29")
Copy down
or if you don't have a list of the sheets names you can make it up on the fly
=INDIRECT("'sheet("&ROW()-1&")'!$B$29")
Copy down
Thanks for the suggestion. However, I copied your formula right back to my file and it didn't work. So I did it another way. I put the tab/cell reference in one cell and then did an =INDIRECT() to capture that information.
K2="'Sheet("&L2&")'!B$29" which has a value of 'Sheet(1)'!B$29
B2=INDIRECT(K2) which now has a value of 40 (contents on Sheet(1).
Thank you!!!!
Thank you ..
Hi, Out of all the formulae, I wish to replace the formula which has generated 0 value with blank space? I am unable to do it with find and replace function,
Please suggest.
Thanks.
Chandoo, you literally just saved me about 2 hours of work. I had a document with a daily report in two formats. The second formate just linked to all the appropriate cells in the other format (different sheets). This was 180 references that needed to be changed and I had to make this for a 4 week period (aka 28 different sheets at 180 references to change per sheet).
Thanks so much.
I have tried this way and without using the Ctrl-` formula view
Either way, I am trying to do something simple, but it won't let me.
I have a bunch of cells with a simple math formula like
=-(0.5*20)
various values in each cell, multiplied by 20
I simply want to change the multiplier globally from 20 to 25. But when I tell it to find *20 and replace it with *25, it replaces the entire cell contents with *25, rather than just replacing the *20 portion of the cell contents.
Can anyone assist with this? Seems so simple, but Excel isn't letting me do it.
Search/Replace 20 or 20) with a cell Reference eg A1 or A1)
Then put the value 25 in A1
By using a * in the search it replaces all the text
how to find a specific cell's value in a column & replace replace it with another cell value i actually need a method to replace a data in ca column and replace with the value i have in a specific cell can i give a [ location ] of data to what i need to find and then give row or column range to where i need to find and the given value & then give a [ location ] of data to what i want to be replace with the find and replace by row & column range & than by specific criteria and than by specific location.
please help.
how to find a specific cell’s value in a column & replace replace it with another cell's value.
i actually need a method to find a specific cell's data in a column and replace it with the value i have in a specific cell.
can i give a [ location ] of data to what i need to find and then give row or column range from where i need to find the given value & then give a [ location ] of data to what i want to be replace with.
find and replace by row & column range & than by specific criteria and than by specific location.
please help.
how to find a specific cell’s value in a column & replace it with another cell’s value.
i actually need a method to find a specific cell’s data in a column and replace it with the value i have in a specific cell.
can i give a [ location ] of data to what i need to find and then give row or column range from where i need to find the given value & then give a [ location ] of data to what i want to be replace with.
"find and replace by row & column range & than by specific criteria and than by specific location."
in more than 100 sheets in entire workbook
please help.
This is a great tool, does anyone knows an easiest way??
I'm working with a system that has over 59000 references... so every time the replace all is activated. I lose an entire day.
i actually needs to find cell number "D12" in column "D" and replace with Cell Number "B8" for example
find what = Cell Number "D12" John McNamara
find Where = in Column "D"
Replace with = Cell Number "B8" Bieber D'Souza
Replace Range = Column "D"
In which Sheet = All Sheets in Work Book (more than 100 Sheets)
Note: in every Sheet Cells Number "D12" & "B8" containing Different Employ Name but the find rang and replace rang are same in every sheet and find what cell number and replace with cell number are same also.
please help!
thank you. saved lot of time.
Thank you from the bottom of my heart!
Hi, I am trying to figure out how to use RE to find and replace several values in a column. Using find and replace does not work because of the values I am working with. I have a column with hundreds of rows that have a description of several operating systems and other info, which looks like this: Windows Server 2008 R2 Member Server Security Technical Implementation Guide; Windows 2008 Member Server Security Technical Implementation Guide; Solaris 10 10 SPARC SECURITY TECHNICAL IMPLEMENTATION GUIDE; and Windows Windows 2003 Member Server Security Technical Implementation Guide.
I need to be able to find and replace (or basically curtail the descriptions) to be Windows 2008 R2; Windows 2008; Windows 2003; and Solaris 10. BUT when I run find and replace with just *2008*, it finds every instance, including the ones with R2 at the end. I need it to only change the ones with 2008 to Windows 2008 and the ones that have 2008 R2 to Windows 2008 R2. I know it is possible, but I have no clue on how to write a macro to do this.
Thanks for your help,
Gerard
Wickedly efficient workaround. Excel really is a powerhouse program, all you have to do is dig into it. Ctl ~ exposes the formulas, and Ctl H allows for the multi edit. Brilliant, Chandoo!