Sweet Sweet Testimonial from a Sweet Sweet Lady

They say on once in a while even monkey’s thump their chests and show off. As a proud evolver, I must take their lead and thump my chest. I want to share a sweet testimonial I received from Marcea, one of our newest readers. Read more to see the testimonial.

Making Interaction Plots using Excel

Yesterday I read about interaction plots on junk charts where he points out the merits of an interaction plot. Interaction plots show interaction effects between 2 factors. For eg. you can show how your product sales have changed between year 1 and year 2 using an interaction plot like the one shown aside.

Copy Data Validations from one cell to another [quick tip]

If only there is paste special for everything in life, things would be much more smoother and fun. Alas, the paste special is limited only to excel.

Here is a handy trick you can use to quickly scale up data validations set up in one cell to say a range of cells.

Just copy the cell by pressing CTRL+C and then go to the target cell(s) and press ALT+ESN. And your data validations are pasted in the new cells. That is all. Quick and Easy.

Project Dashboard + Tweetboard = pure awesomeness!!!

Check out an implementation of project dashboard along with tweetboard by our reader Fernando. He says, it “turned out to be a great success”. I am so happy for him.

Btw, the post includes a link to download the workbook so that you can see the dashboard and tweetboard in action.

Prevent Duplicate Data Entry using Cell Validations

We all know that data validation is a very useful feature in Excel. You can use data validation to create a drop-down list in a cell and limit the values user can enter. But, do you know that you can use data validation in a multitude of ways to prevent users from entering wrong data?

Here is a practical application: Prevent users from entering duplicate values in a range of cells.

For eg. you are making an invoice. Wouldn’t it be cool if Excel prompted you when you enter a duplicate line item so that increase the item quantity instead of repeating it.

Solve Sudoku Puzzles using Excel [because it is weekend]

Sanjay, my colleague is an avid programmer and excel enthusiast. In his spare time he wrote a small VBA macro to solve Sudoku. Sudoku is a very famous number based puzzle with a 9×9 grid of cells. Each of the 9 rows, columns and 3×3 blocks should be filled in such a way that they have all the numbers from 1 to 9. Sudoku is a very effective way to keep your brain cells ticking. I am a huge sudoku fan and I solve sudoku whenever I have few minutes to kill. So naturally I jumped with joy when I saw Sanjay’s excel macro for solving sudoku. He is kind enough to let me share this with all of you.

Get a free copy of Project Management Bundle

Debra at Contextures is having an Excel Fall Giveaway and you could get a free copy of Project Management Bundle by sharing your excel nightmare or excel costume idea. It is that simple. Go here. PS: the flight to Copenhagen was good, I am safe in Scandinavia, regular broadcasting should resume shortly.