All articles in 'Excel Howtos' Category
Transpose a table of data using Excel Formulas
Today lets tackle a familiar data clean-up problem using Excel – Transposing data.
That is, we want to take all rows in our data & make them columns. Something like this:
Learn these 4 techniques to transpose data:
1. Using Paste Special > Transpose
2. Using INDEX formula & Helper cells
3. Using INDEX, ROWS & COLUMNS formulas
4. Using TRANSPOSE Formula
Details about our Power Pivot Course [and a video for those of you not interested]
Hello folks,
If this article was a person, they would be schizophrenic. You see, it has 2 purposes:
- Give you all the details about my upcoming Power Pivot course
- Give you a solution to last week’s vacation days problem
Details about Power Pivot Course
Power Pivot, an Excel add-in makes it easy to connect, analyze & visualize massive amounts of data. This course aims to teach you how to use Power Pivot to analyze data, create advanced reports & prepare dashboards all from familiar interface of Excel. This is ideal for data analysts, reporting & MIS professionals, business analysts, managers & dashboard makers.
Insert Multiple Columns at once [Quick tip]
Here is a quick tip to start your week. Ever wanted to insert a few columns in between like this? Here is how to do it. Hold down control key. Select one column at a time Right click and choose Insert Done! Bonus tip: You can use this to insert rows too! More Quick tips.
Continue »To-do List with Priorities using Excel
A while ago, we published a new year resolution template. This was a hit with our reader with thousands of you downloading it. During last week, Peppe, one of our readers from Italy, took this template and made it even more awesome.
The original template had tasks and completion check mark. As you finish each task, you can see the progress bar moving.
Peppe added priorities to this. With his new version, progress is measured based on how much priority we assigned that particular task. Pretty neat eh?!?
Continue »Extract data using Advanced Filter and VBA
In this post we will learn how to use the Advanced Filter option using VBA to allow us to filter our data on a separate sheet. This has been requested by a lot of our readers and here is how we will use them.
Continue »Highlight Quarters, Weekends in pivot reports using styles [quick tip]
Here is a quick pivot table tip.
When reporting summaries by month, it would be better to highlight 3 months at a time (Jan, Feb, Mar in one color, Apr, May, Jun in another color) than showing all in one color. Today, lets learn how to do this in easiest possible way.
Continue »Show monthly values & % changes in one pivot table
Pivot tables are great help when analyzing lots of data. One of the common questions managers & analysts ask (when looking at monthly sales data for example) is,
How is the monthly performance of our teams (or regions, products etc.)?
A pivot report can answer this question in a snap. Today lets learn how to do that.
Continue »Write a formula to check if two dates are in same month? [homework]
Its Home work time folks. Sharpen your Excel pencils and get cracking.
Find out if 2 dates are in same month
Lets say you have 2 dates in A1, A2.
Q1. What formula tells us if both of them are in same month?
Both dates must be in same month & year!
Go ahead and post your answer in comments.
Continue »Even faster ways to Extract file name from path [quick tip]
The best thing about Excel is that you can do the same thing in several ways. Our yesterdays problem – Extracting file name from full path is no different. There are many different ways to do it, apart from writing a formula. Learn these techniques to be a data extraction ninja.
1. Using find replace
2. Using text to columns
3. Using UDFs
Extract file name from full path using formulas
Today lets tackle a very familiar problem. You have a bunch of very long, complicated file names & paths. Your boss wants a list of files extracted from these paths, like below:
Of course nothing is impossible. You just need correct ingredients. I cannot help you with a strong cup of coffee, so go and get it. I will wait…
Back already? well, lets start the formula magic then.
Continue »Write a formula to check few cells have same value [homework]
Lets test your Excel skills. Can you write a formula to check few cells are equal?
Your homework:
- Let us say you have four values in cells A1, A2, A3, A4
- Write a formula to check if all 4 cells have same value (ie A1=A2=A3=A4)
- Your output can be TRUE/FALSE or 1/0 to indicate a match (or mis-match)
Your the production manager and have a need to schedule uneven resource across uneven requirements, how can you do that?
Well today we’ll look at Resource Allocation and Scheduling using Excel to do the hard work
Use Indexed charts when understanding change [Charting Techniques]
Today, lets talk about indexing, a technique used to compare changes in values over time.
What is indexing?
Lets say you want to compare prices of Gold & Coffee over last few years. Gold price in 2011 (oct) is $1,655 per ounce. And now (sept 2012) it is $1,744. Like wise, Silver price in 2011 is $32.06 and in 2012 it is $33.61. How do we compare such diverse numbers?
Enter indexing.
First we need to calculate price of Gold and Silver in 2012 assuming their starting price is 100. This can be done with simple arithmetic.
Now, we can easily compare the prices. Looking at the indexed prices, we can conclude that both Gold & Silver prices have gone up by similar percentage (~5%).
Continue »Moosa, one of our readers emailed this interesting question:
I have huge list of customers (around 1500).
Table includes following information
Customer # , Customer Name, Sales 2002, sales 2003, … sales 2012My requirements are
1. list of customer who did not have sales during all these years
2. List of customer who have not business from 2003
3. List of customer who have not business from 2004
Today, lets learn how to identify all the non-performing customers.
Continue »18.2 Tips on Rounding numbers using Excel Formulas
Lets talk round numbers today.I have 18.2 tips for you on round numbers.
We can use a variety of formulas to round numbers in Excel depending on the situation. We have ROUND, ROUNDUP, ROUNDDOWN, MROUND, INT, TRUNC, CEILING, FLOOR, FIXED, EVEN, ODD and few more. To know how to use all these formulas and how to round numbers based on any criteria, just read on.
Continue »