5 Keyboard shortcuts for writing better formulas
As an analyst (or manager), I bet a good portion of your Excel time is spent writing formulas and getting the results.
So today, let us learn 5 important keyboard shortcuts that will save you a lot of time and help you write better formulas.
Introduction to Structural References
Ever seen a formula like =SUMIFS(Sheet1!B2:B3923, Sheet1!C2:C3923, A1, Sheet1!D2:D3923, A2) and wondered what it is really doing?!?
If so, you are not alone.
Formulas written with cell references tend to look complicated and clunky. What if we could write formulas in plain English?
That is what Structural References do. When using structural references in formulas, your focus will be on your data, not on which cell ranges the data takes up.
For example, you can write formulas like these:
1) SUM(mySales[no. of customers]) to find how many customers we had.
2) SUMIFS(mySales[no. of customers], mySales[product], “FastCar”) to find how many customers bought “FastCar”
A quick Excel tip while on bike…
As you may know, I am in USA and having a lot of fun exploring new areas, meeting people and conducting live classes. While all of this is enjoyable, I am also feeling guilty because I am unable to squeeze time to share Excel tips on the blog.
So to make it up to you, I recorded this short video (2 mins) with an Excel tip while bicycling in beautiful Euclid Creek Reservation in Cleveland on Friday. Watch it below.
Excel Links – from USA edition
Hello there,
My travel to US was fantastic and fun. Many thanks to Jocelyn & Rob Collie, who found a nice apartment for us and made sure we are settled down in almost no time. Weather has been excellent so far too with lots of sunshine and blue skies. We went to a nearby park the other day and kids really loved walking on trials and exploring.
Gentle reminder
Today is last day to sign-up for my USA Masterclass
Today is last day to join my USA Advanced Excel & Dashboards masterclass with early bird discount. If you live near Chicago, Washington DC or Columbus and love Chandoo.org style of teaching, then you will benefit alot from my masterclass. We have very few spots left in Chicago & Columbus. So go ahead and book yours today and save $200.
Learn Top 10 Excel Features
Last week, we had a lovely poll on what are your favorite features of Excel? More than 120 people responded to it with various answers. So I did what any data analyst worth his salt would do,
I analyzed the data and here are the top 10 features in Excel according to you.
Read on to learn more.
How to create interactive calendar to highlight events & appointments [Tutorial]
One of the popular uses of Excel is to maintain a list of events, appointments or other calendar related stuff. While Excel shines easily when you want to log this data, it has no quick way to visualize this information. But we can use little creativity, conditional formatting, few formulas & 3 lines of VBA code to create a slick, interactive calendar in Excel. Today, lets understand how to do this.
What is your favorite feature of Excel? [poll]
Its Friday, time for another poll.
This weeks topic is inspired from a discussion Jordan started in our forums.
I will go first.
My favorite features are,
Conditional formatting: Quickly highlight something that is not alright (or meets conditions), see trends with data bars or heat maps.
Pivot tables: Turn data in to understandable information with just a few clicks. When combined with slicers & conditional formats, becomes very powerful.
Formulas: Ofcourse, with out formulas, Excel would be a glorified notepad!
What about you? What are your favorite features in Excel? Go ahead and share with us by posting a comment.