Archive for December, 2014

2014 has been the busiest year since starting Chandoo.org. Wow, that is 11 years of breaking previous records. Thank you. In 2014, we published 128 posts (up 27% YoY), received 6,000+ comments (down 19%). Our forum had 8,700+ new members, 6,650 new threads and more than 42,000 posts in 2014. This year, I have also launched Chandoo.org podcast. […]

2014 has been the most awesome year since starting Chandoo.org

Thank you so much for making it happen. This year, more than 10 million people visited our site, learned something and took first step to become awesome in their work. Each & every day of 2014 felt invigorating, exciting & blessed. I could meet 100s of you face to face during my travels to Houston & Dallas in September this year.

A big thanks to you, my reader, for supporting me and choosing chandoo.org as partner in your journey to awesomeness.

Apart from our readers, there are also countless people, websites, books, companies which helped me have a fantastic year. This message is my way of saying thanks to them.

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A big, warm & pleasant hello to you.

I wish you a merry Christmas & Happy New Year 2015. May your holidays be filled with joy, togetherness, celebrations and fulfillment. May your new year be filled with hope, energy and awesomeness.

I want to tell you how thankful I am for all your support in this year. Every time you visit our website, read an article, leave a comment, enroll in a course, purchase a product, read one of my books, listen to a podcast episode, watch a video or tell your friends about Chandoo.org, I feel nothing but gratitude, thankfulness and amazement. 2014 is the most successful year since starting Chandoo.org, all thanks to you. Heartfelt thanks to you, from my family, staff and volunteers.

About this year’s holiday card

We took this picture recently when we went to Udaipur (a city in northern India). For a change, no one closed their eyes when the camera clicked.

A holiday gift for you…

Read on to download your special holiday gift.

We analysts like to compare. If you ever want to keep an analyst busy, just give her 2-3 options. She won’t return to your desk until the cows come home. My wife uses this trick all the time. Picture this:

[In late 2013]
Me: I want to buy a new phone
She: Do you want Nexus 5 or Galaxy S5 or iPhone 5s?

Its late 2014 and I am not done comparing.

So today, let’s talk about an interesting comparison scenario.

Comparing by letter or word

See above demo to understand the concept. Read more to learn how to do this.

This is a guest post by Sohail Anwar.

August 29, 1994. A day that changed my life forever. Football World Cup? Russia and China de-targeting nuclear weapons against each other? Anniversary of the Woodstock festival?

No, much bigger: Two Undertakers show up at WWE Summerslam for an epic battle. Needless to say: MIND() = BLOWN().

And thus begun one boy’s journey into understanding the phenomenon of Multiple Occurrences.

My journey continued, when just a few years later my grandfather handed me down a precious family heirloom: A few columns of meaningless data that I could take away and analyze in Excel. You may laugh but in the 90’s, every boy only wanted two things 1) Lists of pointless data and …

Hello folks, how are you?

I have an announcement for you.

It is almost holiday time. Every year, Chandoo.org celebrates holidays with a 3 day sale on our most popular product – Excel School training program. The sale for this year will be,

10th December to 12th December (Wednesday to Friday)

What is on sale?

You will be able to save $30, $50 or $100 on our most popular courses

• Excel School + Dashboards program ($30 discount)
• Excel School + VBA + Dashboards ($50 discount)
• Excel School + VBA + Power Pivot + Dashboards ($100 discount)

More details & links for Sale page will be available on 10th of December. Stay tuned.

Excel Links

It has been a while since we had a round of Excel links. Here are some cool tips & links for you.

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In the 26th session of Chandoo.org podcast, let’s learn all about Excel !@#$%^+/*(}][<.

I am talking about Excel operators, you silly.

What is in this session?

Do you know Excel has more than 25 operators? That is right. There are a variety of operators beyond the simple + – * and /.

In this podcast, let’s understand all about these operators and how to use them. You will learn,

• Why there is a gap between last & this podcast session
• About Excel operators
• Arithmetic operators
• Text operators
• Reference operators
• Comparison operators
• Closing thoughts

Today, lets talk about an interesting extension to the idea of in-cell charts. Adding average or target markers to the chart.

Adding a marker (like average or target or last year value) can enhance your charts greatly and provide more context. Lets understand how to add marker symbols to in-cell charts.

Recently my iPhone 4 crashed. It is 3.5 years old. And just like any other 3 year old, it started acting weird & crazy one night. The next morning it went silent. It won’t go beyond the Apple logo whenever I start it. Since I couldn’t wait for the phone to start, I took out the SIM card (the phone is unlocked, if you are wondering) and placed it in my old Nokia phone. But alas, none of my contacts are on the SIM. They are in “cloud”.

After a day of answering phone calls from everyone including my mom as “Chandoo here”, I’ve decided to get my contacts back. So I logged in to iCloud to download a backup. And the backup was a .VCF file.

Since I wanted to have all my contact numbers in a spreadsheet, I did what any Excel nerd would do. I built a template that can convert VCF data to Excel worksheet.