Hello, Namaste & Kia Ora. Welcome to Chandoo.org.
My name is Chandoo. My mission is to make you awesome in Excel and Power BI.
I do this by sharing Excel & Power BI tutorials, examples, tips, videos and articles on this website. I live in Wellington, New Zealand with my beautiful wife Jo & our twins Nishanth & Nakshatra. Take a minute to browse various topics of the site to see how I can help you.
Thank you and welcome.
Recently in the Chandoo.org Forums, MR06 asked the question, “I am trying to create a sensitivity table that tells me what amount of equity I
The other day, I was building a spreadsheet to calculate FTE (full time equivalent) for staff based on hours worked on various days in a fortnight. While building the spreadsheet, I came across an interesting problem. Rounding Time to nearest minute. We can’t use ROUND() or MROUND() to round time as these formulas aren’t designed to work with time values. Although time values are technically decimal, rounding time to nearest minute (or quarter hour etc.) can be tricky when usual round formulas. Let me share a few formulas to round time to nearest point.
Let’s say you have a time value (either user input or calculated) in cell A1.
Use below formulas to round time in A1.
When faced with tough problems I react in one of three ways
For most problems, I choose 3rd reaction. Occasionally, I rely on 2nd option and very rarely the first one.
When faced with a tricky time sheet summary problem (as outlined above), after initial lethargy I wanted to solve it.
Jo, my lovely wife quit her job as my partner in crime at Chandoo.org recently and took up a lucrative position at NZ govt. agency. The other day I asked her “how was your day?” when she got home. She smiled and said, “I learned my first Excel shortcut!”.
Guess what it is?
F4.
That is right. The mighty F4 key. You can use it to repeat any action.
Jo was using it to insert rows in her workbook. After inserting first row (using CTRL+ of course), she would press F4 to add more rows as needed.
Here is a simple but vital charting rule.
Start your bar (or column) charts from zero.
To illustrate why you should do this, let me share a personal example.
Over the weekend, the Jon Peltier visited Wellington. He is staying with Jeff (who occasionally guest blogs on Chandoo.org). On Sunday, we all decided to hike up a small mountain near my house for a leisurely family picnic.
While on the top of the mountain, Jo (my wife) took a few pics of us three Excel geeks. As we were standing on a sloping mountain face this is how the pictures look.
Looking at the picture on left, you would confidently say that I am way shorter than other two. But picture on right tells a different story.
Recently I was creating a pivot report with multiple items in row labels area. I had to show sub-totals, but only for one of the fields. Something like above.
How to show selective sub-totals in Pivot Tables
Imagine you are head of human resources at Casual Contracting Co. Every month you hire a lot of temporary staff who spend 1-4 months with CCC before leaving. Sometimes you hire the same people again. Of late, you have noticed a strange process gap. You are paying same person two (or more) salaries.
This is because you are hiring a person for new temp role even before their current one ended. See above picture.
So how to avoid making such hiring boo-boos.
Simple, using Excel of course.
Excel Tables have been around for a decade now (they are introduced in Excel 2007), and yet, very few people use them. They are versatile, easy and elegant. At Chandoo.org, we celebrate Tables all the time. If you have never used them, start with below tuts.
While tables are super helpful, they do come with some limitations. Today let’s examine one such unique problem and learn about an elegant solution.
for more videos…
Everything from Power Query to Dashboards, Shortcuts to Formulas, Pivots to Charts in one course.
BeginnerTables & Structural Referencing
Cell referencing
Excel operators
IF
IntermediateSUMIFS, COUNTIFS
XLOOKUP NEW
VLOOKUP
INDEX + MATCH lookups
AdvancedMulti-condition lookups
Array Formulas
OFFSET
INDEX
Lists100+ Excel Formulas list
Top 10 formulas
15 Everyday formulas
Challenges & Home workExcel Homework
BeginnerExcel Pivot Table Tutorial
Multi-table pivots with data model
Advanced
Advanced Pivot Tables
Distinct count in Pivots
Ranking values in Pivots
GETPIVOTDATA
How to use slicers
Lists35 shortcuts & tricks for data analysis
Top 10 pivot table tricks
15 quick & powerful ways to analyze business data
ResourcePivot Tables Page
BasicsHow to pick right charts
Why bar charts should start at 0
Add a line to column chart
Correlation vs. Causation
ExamplesHand-drawn charts
Budget vs. Actual chart
Interactive charts
Chart typesHistograms & Pareto charts
Forecasting with charts
Gantt chart
Funnel chart
5 star chart
Indexed charts
Panel charts - Small multiples
AdvancedTarget vs. Actual progress - Biker on a hill chart
Stacked chart with indicators
Cropped chart - when some values are too big
Jitter plot
Joy plot
Step chart
Dynamic chart with check boxes
Lists & TricksCharting shortcuts & tricks
Using shapes in charts
Awesome chart titles with this trick
Use chart themes and styles
Use selection pane to work with charts faster
If you are new to Excel or have never used it, use below links to come up to speed.
Have been using Excel for a while? Check out these tutorials to learn more and become awesome.
Work with Excel a lot and know your game well? We have some very-advanced topics for you too.
Check out:
Excel challenges
Advanced Charting
Data Tables & Simulations
Power BI
Power BI is the most exciting thing to happen for your data since spreadsheets. If you are looking for a new skill to learn this year, I highly recommend Power BI. Check out below tutorials and get started today.
Learn how to work with data, make calculations, pivots, create amazing charts and powerful dashboards from scratch using Excel School + Dashboards program. Suitable for analysts, managers or professionals who need to use Excel often.
Use VBA to automate your tasks and build powerful spreadsheet based apps. In this course, learn all about how to program with VBA, how to use the language and object model to your advantage. Suitable for people who build a lot of things with Excel.
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