Author Archive

It is star wars day. Let’s celebrate the ultimate nerd day of the known universe in a way that resonates with us. Let’s dress up as storm troopers and make exploding 3d pie charts.

Just kidding. Let’s just make a cool visualization in Power BI instead.

We all know that Pivot Tables are best thing since avocado on toast. But they can’t slice text values and spread them in a table with Pivots. So how to take a large blob of text and turn it in to something meaningful like above?

Simple, we use Power Query.

Are you hungry from some Excel awesomeness? It’s launch time. I am very happy to announce that our most popular analytics online class – 50 ways to analyze data is opening up for enrollments in first week of May 2018. As the name suggests, 50 ways program is all about data and making sense of it. You will learn many ways to analyze, visualize and present data to your clients and superiors. Next time someone asks you, “Can you look at this data and tell us what is going on?” you can confidently say YES.

Learn all about 50 ways program and signup for the waiting list.

In this article, Let me show case one of the examples from 50 ways to analyze data course and how it can help you.

We all know that learning a few keyboard shortcuts can speedup your Excel game. Most pro users rely on a handful shortcuts when working with large spreadsheets. But when it comes to charting, we automatically reach for mouse. But do you know that you can use few simple shortcuts to do most day to day chart related things?

Ready for top 5 keyboard shortcuts for Excel charts? Read on.

Ever wanted to make a cool, snazzy interactive chart in Excel? Something like this:

In this tutorial, learn all about making your very first interactive chart. We use both formulas and pivot tables to build two versions of an awesome interactive chart in Excel.

Commonwealth games 2018 have ended in the weekend. Let’s take a look at the games data thru Power BI to understand how various countries performed.

Here is my viz online or you can see a snapshot above.

Looks good, isn’t it? Well, read on to know how it is put together.

The 2018 edition of Commonwealth games are on for a week now. Both of my homes – India and New Zealand have been doing so well. Naturally, I wanted to gather games data and make something fun and creative from it. Here is my attempt to amuse you on this Friday.

Looks interesting? Want to know how to make something like this on your own? Then read on…

Let’s say you have data like this in a spreadsheet. Don’t roll your eyes, I am 102% sure, right at this moment, someone is (ab)using Excel to create similar messy data.

How do you reshape it to one column?

You could use formulas, VBA or Power Query. Let’s examine all these methods to see what is best. All these methods assume your data is in a range aptly named myrange.

Nishanth & Nakshatra, my kids are now 8 years old and learning mathematics at school. Very soon (from this Saturday), they will have 2 weeks of school term break. As a stay at home dad, I shudder at the thought of school holidays. So this time, I have an evil plan. I made maths worksheets for them. Everyday, I will print one and ask them to complete.

If you are a stay at home parent and want to keep your kids busy for a few minutes every day, grab a copy of this and give it a go. Keep in mind that the workbook uses RANDBETWEEN(), so the numbers change every time. If you have multiple kids, print multiple copies. There are no answer sheets, so when you need to check the answers, you too must calculate them by hand.

It is Easter time. This is the first Easter we are celebrating in our new house. So it is bound to have so many special memories. For last 10 years (wow, it has been a decade of tradition), I have been running Excel based egg hunts every Easter. It all started in 2009, when I was living in Sweden (where Easter is a BIG thing). I had to share the enthusiasm with someone, so I made our first Easter egg hunt on the blog.

This year, join me on an Excel themed cryptic crossword clues – Easter egg hunt. Don’t forget to share your scores and explanations in the comments.

Pivot tables are fun, easy and super useful. Except, they can be ugly when it comes to presentation. Here is a quick way to make a pivot look more like a report.

• Just type over the headers / total fields to make them user friendly.

See this quick demo to understand what I mean:

So simple and effective.

I believe in frugal living and paying yourself first. One of the simple ways to achieve this is by using a budget. You know how much money you get. Once you can track (or estimate) how much you are spending, it is easy to see how much you are paying your future self and what wiggle room you have. So in the spirit of making you awesome in life, not just Excel, let me share a simple but elegant household budget spreadsheet.
Here is a screenshot of the budget.

Let’s take a whirlwind trip to coolest little capital – Wellington. It is a windy place, so hold on to your hats and spreadsheets.

Almost everyone who spends more than 2 days in Wellington would agree that it is a windy place. But how windy is Welly? In this two part series, we will use Power Query, Excel charts and coffee to answer that question.

But, first let’s start with a joke.

What happens when you throw a boomerang in Frank Kitts Park?

You will have to buy another one, coz you are not getting that one back.

Let’s start the new year with a bang.

Excel Tables were introduced more than a decade ago, but a lot of people don’t know them or under utilize them. So start this year by becoming a very table genius.

What is Excel Table?

Excel tables are a simple and elegant way to structure and store your data. Let’s say you have staff details like below. Instead of calling it like A1:E72, you can convert this data in to a table and call it, you guessed it right, covfefe (or more coherent option like – staff).

Here is a New year gift to all our readers – free 2018 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.