Get rid of that ugly formatting with two simple tricks
We are on a tiki tour around NZ. So far we have been to Taupo & Rotorua. And we are doing what you do when you are on a holiday – being lazy, going on walks, swimming in lakes, eating copious amounts of food and getting lost. Of course, all this means, I have very little time to access to internet & my blog. So the updates will be slow for next two weeks. Here is a quick tip (well, two of them) to keep you busy and awesome.
How to remove ugly formatting from your workbooks?
Do you have a colleague or boss (shudder) that loves to apply their special touches to every workbook their mouse lands on? Do you constantly wince and whine when you have to work on that spreadsheet.
Here are two handy ways to restore your data to its original glory.
Clear formats:
Simple, select the data you want formatting gone from, go to Home > Clear > Formats.
And Excel will weave an expelliformat spell at your data and make it clean.
Here is a quick demo.
Untrimmable Spaces – Excel Formula
Let’s talk about the untrimmable spaces.
We all know that TRIM() removes extra spaces from the beginning, ending and middle of a text.
So for example, if A1 has ” something and one more ”
TRIM(A1)
will give “something and one more”
We can use CLEAN() function to remove non-printable characters (like the ASCII codes 0 to 31). Of course, SPACE is technically a printable character, so CLEAN() won’t remove spaces.
The untrimmable spaces…?
The other day Sreekanth emailed me a sample of data and asked, “how do I remove the spaces in this list and convert them to numbers?”
Naturally I tried to TRIM().
But the data won’t budge. See above.
Hmm, let’s investigate why.
Finding the closest school [formula vs. pivot table approach]
First a quick personal update: There has been a magnitude 7.8 earth quake in NZ on 14th November 2016 early morning. It is centered in Kaikoura, which is about 250 km away from Wellington. We did feel several shakes and after shocks. It has been an interesting and often scary experience. But my family is safe. I feel very sad for the all the damage and the loss for families in NZ. If you suffered from this quake, My prayers and thoughts are with you.
Yesterday, a friend asked me an interesting question. He has school distance data, like above. He wants to know which is the closest school for each school.
There are a few ways to answer this question. Let’s examine two approaches – formulas & pivot tables and see the merits of both.
Stacked Bar/Column Chart with Indicator Arrows – Advanced
Lets take last weeks Stacked Bar/Column Chart and add some high-performance steroids.
Formula Forensics No. 041 – Convert a Roman Numeral to a Number
Learn how to convert a Roman Numeral to a Number using this nifty formula. No VBA required.
Stacked Bar and Indicator Arrow Chart – Tutorial
Learn how to develop a Stacked Bar chart with Indicator Arrow in this Tutorial
Hourly Goals Chart with Conditional Formatting
A while back I developed a solution to a Chandoo.org Forum question, where the user wanted a 4 level doughnut chart where each doughnut was made up of 12 segments and each segment was to be colored based on a value within a range. If the values changed he wanted the chart to update, Conditional Formating like:
This post looks at how this was achieved.