All articles in 'Learn Excel' Category

Ever wanted to make a random sentence or text? You can use Excel formulas to make totally random sentences. This is a great way to generate test data or dummy data-sets.

Happy New Year to all our readers. Let’s kick start 2020 with an awesome calendar, daily planner and monthly calendar template. Please visit the post page to download the 2020 Calendar Excel Template.

Hello readers, I have an exciting announcement for you.

I will be presenting at two events at London in April 2020. Please consider this my personal invitation and join me for Excel + Power BI fun.

Do you want to simulate multiple cash-flow scenarios and calculate the rate of return? Then this article is for you. In this page, learn how to,

• Introduction to IRR & XIRR functions
• Calculate rate of return from a set of cash-flows with XIRR
• Simulating purchase or terminal value changes with data tables
• Apply conditional formatting to visualize the outputs
• Common issues and challenges faced when using XIRR

Validating your data as you type can prevent any surprises when you are doing analysis / follow-up on the data. Thankfully, excel has the right tools to do it. Excel drop down list can assist you in picking up a value from a valid list to enter in a cell. Here is a short how-to […]

This is CRAZY!!!. I stumbled on a weird use for FILTERXML() while reading a forum post earlier today. So I couldn’t wait to test it. I am happy to share the results.

Say you have some text (sentence / phrase / keyword etc.) in a cell and you want to extract the nth word. Unfortunately Excel doesn’t have SPLIT() formula. So we end up writing obscenely long array formulas or use gazillion helper columns.

Here is the super sneaky trick. Use FILTERXML() instead.

This is part of our Excel Interview Questions series.

VLOOKUP or INDEX+MATCH? When you should use each function and why?

This is such a great question to ask in interviews. So in my first installment of Excel interview questions, let me answer it.

Can we predict cricket match score in Excel? Using machine learning, ensemble modeling, multiple regression and Excel formulas we can. This tutorial explains how.

Imagine you are in a life sustaining planet named Pearth, in another galaxy. One day you got to work, fired up Excel (hey, what else would you use? Excel is the best data software in any galaxy 🙂 ) and started working.

You came across a dataset that need sorting, but left to right – horizontally.

Now what? Do you turn your monitor sideways?

We all know that VLOOKUP can find first match and return the results. But what if you want all the matches? Use this simple trick instead.

Excel has hundreds of formulas. But as a new learner or user, you may want to just focus on top 10 formulas to get the most out of it. Assuming you already know the basics (check out Beginner Excel page if you are complete newbie), here is a list of top 10 Excel formulas for you.

So you have built that excel report your boss wanted. And you were all eager to use the spreadsheet in your presentation. But in the last minute, your boss asked you to change average sales to total sales figures. You also want to grab an espresso before rushing to the meeting. Now what?

We all know VLOOKUP (or INDEX+MATCH) as an indispensable tool in our Excel toolbox. But what if you want the lookups to be a little gentler, nicer and relaxed?

Let’s say you want to lookup the amount $330.50 against a list of payments. There is no exact match, but if we look 50 cents in either direction, then we can find a match. Here is a demo of what I mean.

Unfortunately, you can’t convince VLOOKUP to act nice.

Hey VLOOKUP, I know you are awesome and all, but can you cut me some slack here? 

VLOOKUP is tough, reliable and has a cold heart. Or is it?

In this post, let’s learn how to do lenient lookups.

Do you want to learn Advanced Excel, data analysis, creative charting, dashboard reporting and be productive in Excel? Then you are going to love my Excel School v2.0.

This is the golden age of data. Any rewarding job or entrepreneurship requires good data literacy. We are all expected to understand the relevance of data, how to manage it, how to analyze it, visualize it and tell elegant stories.

This is where Excel School comes in.

Obviously, everywhere you look this week, you find advice on how to do better this year.

Well, you don’t have to wait for a new year to become awesome at your work, any day is new year for the rest of your life.

So, today I want to share 12 steps to learn Excel and becoming awesome. But first I have a secret to confess…,

I think becoming awesome in Excel useless.

What we really want is, to become awesome in our work. Since we spend a lot of time using Excel (and other office software), knowing how to use these better can have a huge impact on how we do our work.

In that spirit, lets look at 12 steps to learn Excel so you become awesome in your work.