Archive for December, 2011

This year has been the most hectic since we started Chandoo.org. We had 178 posts, more than 7,500 comments & 10,000 forum posts. We have trained more than 2,500 students thru Excel school, VBA Classes & Financial Modeling Classes this year alone.

More than 3.5 million people visited our site this year, spending an average of 2:30 minutes per visit, consuming a whopping total of 10.5 million page views. Just to give you a comparison, last year (2010), we had 1.5 million people visiting 5.5 million pages. We have also added 17,000 more RSS / Newsletter members this year. It is a hectic year for the site.

To wrap up the wonderful year, I want to share a list of posts that most of you loved.

2011 has been the most awesome year since we started Chandoo.org.

Without doubt, the credit goes to our community – that is you.

I feel very fortunate to have you in our community. You inspire me to learn & share. I know I said this several times, but everytime, I feel like I have not done enough. Thank you so very much.

Apart from our little community, I feel thankful to many others, who have helped me through out 2011 to make you awesome in Excel. In this post, I am highlighting them & expressing my gratitude.

Here is a new year gift to all our readers – free 2012 Excel Calendar Template.

This calender has,

» One page full calendar with notes, in 4 different color schemes
» 1 Mini calendar
» Monthly calendar (prints to 12 pages)
» Works for any year, just change year in Full tab.

Go ahead and download the FREE 2012 Calendar and Enjoy.

Christmas & New year have always been our favorite holidays. Many of our relatives & friends visit us around this time. The weather is excellent. This year, it seems even more special. Nakshatra & Nishanth (our twins) are looking forward to this as much as we do. Plus, we are celebrating it in our new home. Feels magical.

We wish you Merry Christmas & Happy New Year 2012.

I also want to tell you how thankful I am for your love, support & kindness. Everyday, I feel inspired knowing that I can share my knowledge, mistakes & passion with all of you. Thank you so much for your eagerness to learn from me, we have a home now, we get to spend time with our kids and do things we love & care. Thank you.

One of the most asked questions within the posts and Forums at Chandoo.org is, How Does Sumproduct work ?

Today in Formula Forensics we take at look at just that with a few worked examples.

Some of you know that I run an online Excel training program – Excel School. This program has 24 hours of detailed, step-by-step, fun & very useful Excel training, all available online so that you can view & learn at your own pace.

Creating this program has been the best thing that happened in my life. This program has been received very well by Excel users all over the world. Since we launched in Jan 2010, More than 2,500 people have joined Excel School and have become awesome in Excel. Personally, I have learned so much more about Excel, teaching & running business by conducting this program in last 2 years.

You too can become awesome in Excel by joining us. Please click here.

Palindrome: – A palindrome is a word, phrase, number, or other sequence of units that can be read the same way in either direction, with general allowances for adjustments to punctuation and word dividers (“Wikipedia”).

This week in Formula Forensics we’re having a look at determining if a cell contains a palindrome.

Have you created models which run into 20 – 30 years? You might have noticed that navigating to the last year (the last column) is probably the most boring part (and also the most time consuming part). Excel does provide you a shortcut (Ctrl + end), but that hardly works! It’s been a while since […]

Last week I asked, What is one area of Excel you want to learn more?

More than 250 of you responded to this question. Many of you shared your areas of interest thru comments, quite a few of you also emailed me personally.

So what next?

You told us what you want to learn, the next step is logical. We share some of the best tutorials & examples with you so that you can learn. In this post, we have presented more than 75 links, to help you learn your area of focus.

I have divided this in to 16 areas. In each area, we have identified (upto) 5 best links for you to learn more. I have also recommended 1 or 2 training programs that make you awesome in that area. Plus, if we found any excellent external resources, we have highlighted them as well.

So go ahead and learn Excel.

Zebra Stripes and Checker Boards

This week in Formula Forensics I’m taking a break from Array Formulas to have a look at some Zebra Stripes and Checker Boards.

No, I haven’t gone crazy, although some may argue that point.

More specifically were going to take a look at, Zebra Stripes and Checker-Board Conditional Formatting.

This series of articles will give you an overview of how to manage spreadsheet risk. These articles are written by Myles Arnott from Excel Audit

Part 1: An Introduction to managing spreadsheet risk
Part 2: How companies can manage their spreadsheet risk
Part 3: Excel’s auditing functions
Part 4: Using external software packages to manage your spreadsheet risk

The potential impact of spreadsheet error hit the UK business news recently after a mistake in a spreadsheet resulted in outsourcing specialist Mouchel issuing a major profits warning and sparked the resignation of its chief executive. Over the next few weeks we will look at the risk spreadsheets can introduce to an organisation and the steps that can be taken to minimise this risk.

It is almost weekend. Today we (Jo and I) are going to watch a cricket match being played in Vizag. We are pretty excited as this is the first time we are watching a match in stadium. So, let keep this light and fun. I want to know What is one area of Excel you […]

Today, while answering a reader’s email, I wrote this VBA code, If Target.Value = “yes” Then ‘do something End If But I realized that my code would run only the Target cell has “yes” in it. It wont run if the target cell has “YES”, or “Yes” or “YeS”. This is because by default, all […]

Congratulations Chandoo.org on reaching 1,000,000 page hits in November 2011.

Hui…