SQL Insert / Update statements from CSV files

Often when you are working on 2 incompatible systems and try to import data from one to another, excel can be a handy tool. I have used excel plenty of times to generate SQL insert / update statements which I could later execute on the database console. Here is a tutorial if you ever have [...]

Visualization Challenge - How to show market share changes?

One of our readers Jennifer mailed me with this excel charting problem she is having. I thought why not ask other readers for their advice on this. So here it goes:
The Charting Challenge - Visualizing Changes in Market Share
Here is an excerpt from her email:
The gist of my problem is how to show change-in-market-share between [...]

Calculating Paydays in a calendar year using Excel

In India salary is usually paid on the last working day of a month - the payday. It is slightly different in countries where payrolls are processed every 2 weeks. For eg. in US most companies pay salary on every 2nd Friday / Thursday.
We can calculate the paydays / payroll periods in excel with [...]

Tracking your stock portfolio using Google Docs

By integrating services like Google Finance, Search in to spreadsheet functions, google docs has paved the way for endless possibilities.

Google spreadsheet function GoogleFinance() can be used to build stock portfolio tracker sheet that can fetch historical stock quotes to tell how your money is doing.
Click here to see the stock portfolio tracker sheet on Google [...]

Creating KPI Dashboards in Microsoft Excel [Part 2 or 4] - Adding One Click Sort

Creating KPI Dashboards in Microsoft Excel is a series of 4 posts by Robert from Munich, Germany.
Read part 1 of this series, Creating Key Performance Indicator Dashboards in Excel with Scroll Controls before reading this post.

The Challenge - Sorting
With the post KPI Dashboard Table – Scroll we started a little series of posts on [...]

Creating KPI Dashboards in Microsoft Excel [Part 1 of 4]

Creating KPI Dashboards in Microsoft Excel is a series of 4 posts by Robert from Munich, Germany. Robert has been using excel for last 18 years starting with MS Excel version 3.0 in 1990. He has huge passion for data visualization and presentation using excel. When I got a mail from him 2 weeks back [...]

Bingo / Housie Ticket Generator in Excel

I am fascinated by board games. They provide immense fun, anyone can enjoy them, they are unpredictable and best of all they are great value for money. That is why whenever I get sometime I experiment with simulating games to know them better [read Why Monopoly board game is not as random as it appears]. [...]