Archive for January, 2016

It seems spreadsheets & dinosaurs on a collision course. How else can you explain Jon’s XKCD Velociraptor problem solved with Excel and now this. Debby, alert reader of our blog sent me this email yesterday.

I need an algebraic formula to solve this in Excel

I have 5 heads, 5 bodies, 4 arm sets, 4 leg sets and 3 tails. I need to see if I can create 1000 dinosaurs from these, and if that’s too many AND I need the 5 digit groupings to prove it and create them.
basically Xa*Xb*Xc*Xd*Xe=1000 – I’m not supposed to go over 1200. […] And then I want the 5 digit combinations if possible – right now they are trying to do the combinations by hand – would be awesome if we could do it in Excel.

Here is a quick tip to reduce the time you spend on chart formatting – use chart styles & color themes.

Excel offers various pre-defined color schemes and chart styles. Using them is very simple.

1. Select your chart
2. Go to Chart Design ribbon
3. Click on the style or color scheme you want.
4. Your chart changes instantly.

Here is an interesting problem to keep you busy.

Transpose the address data in column A into the format indicated in C:G using either VBA, formulas or Power Query. Once done, post your answers in comments section.

Here is an interesting chart from Economist, ironically titled The weight of the world. Can you tell what is wrong with it?

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In the 51st session of Chandoo.org podcast, let’s discuss most frequently asked questions about VLOOKUP.

What is in this session?

In this podcast,

• What is VLOOKUP?
• What happens when VLOOKUP can’t find the value?
• Should my list be sorted?
• Is VLOOKUP slower than INDEX + MATCH?
• What if my list has multiple matches?
• How to fetch 2nd / 3rd matching item?
• How to fetch all matching items?
• How to fetch items matching multiple conditions?
• How to speed up VLOOKUP?
• Why doesn’t my VLOOKUP work?
• What to do in case of errors?
• Resources for you

A very happy new year to you. May 2016 be your most awesome year yet.

This year too I plan to share tutorials, tips, podcasts & videos to make you awesome. I hope to focus on

• Excel 2016 – exploring new features
• Power BI – What is it, how does it make you awesome.
• Write a sequel to The VLOOKUP Book.
• Launch a new online course on Power BI & New Excel.
• Run 2 more batches of 50 ways to analyze data program in Feb & July 2016.
• Run another dashboard contest on Chandoo.org
• Write about awesome ways to work with data – formulas, charts, tables, pivots etc.
• Talk about many advanced and work specific Excel scenarios in the podcast

But wait, what do you want to learn more…?

While these are my plans, I want to make sure Chandoo.org helps you the best. So please take a minute and answer this one question survey.

Here is a New year gift to all our readers – free 2016 Excel Calendar & daily planner Template.

This calendar has,

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