It is Your Week @ PHD. You get to see all the excel tips shared by PHD readers like you. I am very excited about this. Today I rushed home from work and opened the google docs to see the tips submitted by you, and found several new and fun things. You can be part of this excitement too: just click here to share your tips with us.
Here is the part 1 of the series.
The first and foremost chart construction tip by Jon Peltier
Before you take any steps towards constructing a chart, get the data right. This will save time and effort, reduce frustration, and amaze your boss, clients, and that cute young thing in accounting. Well, your boss and clients anyway.
Consider it as a set of data extracted from a database: each row is a record, each column is a field, the first row is the field names.
First row of the data range: series names as column headers.
First column of the data range: category labels or X values.
Intersection of first row and first column: overcome your natural tendency for order and uniformity, and leave this cell blank.
Data is Series in columns.
A Flurry of Keyboard Shortcuts and Productivity Hacks by Barbara
I use several shortcuts
- F12 for ‘Save As’
- F2 for ‘Edit’
- F4 to switch between absolute and relative formula references, whilst in edit mode.
- Control & 1 (using the number keys not the number pad) for ‘format cells’
If you want to copy part of a spreadsheet to a powerpoint:
Highlight the area, hold shift, click edit in the menu, copy picture, choose ‘as shown on screen’ or ‘as shown when printed’. Paste into the powerpoint slide.If you put the insert rows, insert columns & group icons in you toolbar you can use them for the opposite function as well. Press & hold the shift key, then click on one of the tools, it will do the opposite. This not only saves space in your toolbar, but I find it useful as I can not easily tell the difference between the insert & delete or group & ungroup icons.
Several ways to search text using formulas by Vishy
Download these examples and play with them.
Lookup into SubstringLet’s say you want to find Age in Column D by referring to Part of First Name in cell G3 as below
First Names are in B3:B7
Ages are in D3:D7
Part of First Name Reference in G3
{ =INDEX($D$3:$D$7,MATCH(TRUE,FIND(G3,$B$3:$B$7)>0,0)) } Must be entered as an array (Ctrl + Shift + Enter)
Use SEARCH instead of FIND for case-insensitive lookup
You can also use regular expressions – Download the examples
* refers to any number of characters, including null (i.e. no character)
? refers to exactly one character, not null
Multiple Criteria Lookup
Let’s say you want to find Age in Column D by referring to First Name in cell G4 and Last Name in H4 as below
First Names are in B3:B7
Last Names are in C3:C7
Ages are in D3:D7
First Name Reference in G4
Last Name Reference in H4
{ =INDEX($D$3:$D$7,MATCH(1,($B$3:$B$7=G4)*($C$3:$C$7=H4),0)) } Must be entered as an array (Ctrl + Shift + Enter)
Some Resources to help you understand these tips:
Introduction to Excel Array Formulas
INDEX Excel Formula – Learn by Example (Used to construct a dynamic chart)
MATCH Excel Formula – Tutorial & Examples
Absolute and Relative Formula References – A Beginner Guide
Jon, Barbara and Vishy, You are truly amazing human beings. We at PHD love you for these wonderful tips.
23 Responses to “Learn Top 10 Excel Features”
What it looks like if excel without formula?? 🙂
It would be not excel it would just be fancy tables in which you could just use power point. (Chandoo) would Access be an alternative?
Awesome piece of work!!!
Great article.
Chandoo - my biggest interest in the article was the awesome word-graphic at the top - where did you go to get it done into a shape?
@Rich.. thank you. I used http://www.tagxedo.com/ to generate this word cloud. I took all the comments in the original post, pasted them in tagxedo website and set up the shape etc.
Awesome Chandoo.. You need always needs coffee to start up with. BTW , how did u created the Heart Shaped picture filled with High Repetitive text in it .. Please put it on your Next blog ...
Chandoo, good article. I’ve added a link to it from Connexion – our collection of the most useful and interesting spreadsheet-related articles from the web. See http://www.i-nth.com/resources/connexion
Hi,
Just one small question. Where the hell have been I in the past for not discovering this website sooner?
I've lost a job interview recently where even though I had the subject knowledge, I was not upto their mark in Excel.
Thank you for all the free tips, guidance and for creating this forum environment.
[PS: I've just been through the site for the 1st time, and have signed up for the newsletter. You can expect pretty stupid questions from me soon]
Hy Chandoo, you always inspire me with to explore something new in excel. This data structure table is only for excel 2007 or compatible to 2010. I recently installed latest excel version 2013 in my System and experience problems regarding operating according to previous one. I'm waiting your article relates to that excel version.
Thanks
Awesome article Mr. Chandoo and that is a awesome heart shaped pic you created. Great tips as well.
[...] Learn Top 10 Excel Features | Chandoo.org – Learn Microsoft Excel Online. [...]
Chandoo is awesome..
Thanks, i got better, And i always get 90.50 in my grade card but now i get 96.50 i improved because of the tutorials you gave, Thank You Very Much Chandoo Guy.
Hi chandoo, i am intersted in seeing the video or step by step done procedure of analysing the comments and presenting in the data percentage steps. I think this one would be first step in finding out how generally happens data calculation. Thank you.
As well i would like to know how to get that black shape art of your face which i see in chandoo. I am interested in making it for me.
Nice to see the features considered by Excel users to be most useful. It might be a good idea to also analyze StackOverflow Excel questions to see what keywords appear most often.
Here are my top 10 Excel Features (for advanced users):
http://www.analystcave.com/excel-10-top-excel-features/
Thanks a ton for this it totally helped with my homework ????
Very good effort
Thank you for this. Lots of learning in the links you've provided for this septuagenarian.
Pls send me new post
Dude, your humor ? ?
Loved your work.
Hello Sir,
I am Sanjeev Khakre and i from Indore City, India , I am your big follower and i have watch your videos and learnt a lots of excel trick or function and many more . thanks so much for all of your excellent support.
Your excel knowledge is real awesome.
Thanks
Sanjeev
Your work is excellent but pls willing to know more details about the features of microsoft excel
Chandoo Would Access be a better alternative than VB?