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)
12 Responses to “Analyzing Search Keywords using Excel : Array Formulas in Real Life”
Very interesting Chandoo, as always. Personally I find endless uses for formulae such as {=sum(if(B$2:B$5=$A2,$C$2$C$5))}, just the flexibility in absolute and relative relative referencing and multiple conditions gives it the edge over dsum and others methods.
I've added to my blog a piece on SQL in VBA that I think might be of interest to you http://aviatormonkey.wordpress.com/2009/02/10/lesson-one-sql-in-vba/ . It's a bit techie, but I think you might like it.
Keep up the good work, aviatormonkey
Hi Chandoo,
You might find this coded solution I posted on a forum interesting.
http://www.excelforum.com/excel-programming/680810-create-tag-cloud-in-vba-possible.html
[...] under certain circumstances. One of the tips involved arranging search keywords in excel using Array Forumlas. Basically, if you need to know how frequent a word or group of keywords appear, you can use this [...]
@Aviatormonkey: Thanks for sharing the url. I found it a bit technical.. but very interesting.
@Andy: Looks like Jarad, the person who emailed me this problem has posted the same in excelforum too. Very good solution btw...
Realy great article
"You can take this basic model and extend it to include parameters like number of searches each key phrase has, how long the users stay on the site etc. to enhance the way tag cloud is generated and colored."
How would you go about doing this? I think it would need some VB
Hi,
I found the usage very interesting, but is giving me hard time because the LENs formula that use ranges are not considering the full range, in other words, the LEN formula is only bringing results from the respective "line" cell.
Using the example, when I place the formula to calculate the frequency for "windows" brings me only 1 result, not 11 as displayed in the example. It seems that the LEN formula using ranges is considering the respective line within the range, not the full range.
Any hint?
@Thiago
You have to enter the formula as an Array Formula
Enter the Formula and press Ctrl+Shift+Enter
Not just Enter
Thank you, Hui! I couldn't work out how this didn't work
is there a limit to the number of lines it can analyse.
Ie i am trying to get this to work on a list of sentances 1500 long.
@Gary
In Excel 2010/2013 Excel is only limited by available memory,
So just give it a go
As always try on a copy of the file first if you have any doubts
Apologies if I am missing something, but coudn't getting frequency be easier with Countif formula. Something like this - COUNTIF(Range with text,"*"&_cell with keyword_&"*")
Apologies if I missed, but what is the Array Formula to:
1. Analyze a list of URL's or a list of word phrases to understand frequency;
2. List in a nearby column from most used words to least used words;
3. Next to the list of words the count of occurrences.