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Latest Tips & Tutorials

Are you an analyst? Use these 25 shortcuts & tricks to boost your productivity

Analyst’s life is busy. We have to gather data, clean it up, analyze it, dig the stories buried in it, present them, convince our bosses about the truth, gather more evidence, run tests, simulations or scenarios, share more insights, grab a cup of coffee and start all over again with a different problem.

So today let me share with you 25 shortcuts, productivity hacks and tricks to help you be even more awesome.

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July 7, 2015

What is the coolest thing you made with Excel? [weekend poll]

It is almost weekend. I am sure most of you have plans (if you are USA, wish you happy 4th of July). As for me, I am going on a 80KM (50 mile) bicycle trip to a nearby lake to watch birds on Saturday morning. On Sunday, we (kids & I) are planning to make a scrapbook from our Australian experiences.

So let me keep this nice & simple.

What is the coolest thing you made with Excel?

Go ahead and share your answers in the comments area.

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July 3, 2015

15 Quick & powerful ways to analyze business data

Here is a situation all too familiar.

You are looking at a spreadsheet full of data. You need to analyze and tell a story about it. You have little time. You don’t know where to start.

Today let me share 15 quick, simple & very powerful ways to analyze business data. Ready? Let’s get started.

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July 1, 2015

CP037: Error error on the wall, How do I fix you all? – Understanding & Fixing Excel Errors

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

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In the 37th session of Chandoo.org podcast, Let’s debug ’em #VALUEs & #N/As.

What is in this session?

In this podcast,

Introduction to Excel formula errors
The easy kind: syntax errors
The triky ones: # ERRORs
Fixing errors – using IFERROR & ISERROR
Error checking & debug options
Using Errors deliberately – charts & data validation
A challenge for you – produce #NULL error
Conclusions

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June 25, 2015

Introduction to Slicers – What are they, how to use them, tips, advanced techniques & interactive reports using Excel Slicers

Slicers are one of my favorite feature in Excel. And here is a quick demo to show why they are my favorite.

Slicers – what are they?

Slicers are visual filters. Using a slicer, you can filter your data (or pivot table, pivot chart) by clicking on the type of data you want.

For example, let’s say you are looking at sales by customer profession in a pivot report. And you want to see how the sales are for a particular region. There are 2 options for you do drill down to an individual region level.

Add region as report filter and filter for the region you want.
Add a slicer on region and click on the region you want.

With a report filter (or any other filter), you will have to click several times to pick one store. With slicers, it is a matter of simple click.

Calculating Billy’s total working hours [solution & discussion]

Few days ago, I asked you “How many hours did Billy work?” There were more than 100 responses with lots of innovative solutions.

So today, let’s examine various ways to calculate total working hours given start & end times of tasks. Please watch below video.

Calculating Bill’s total working hours (video)

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June 22, 2015

Use Paste Special to multiply (or add, divide etc.) a range with a variable [quick tip]

Here is a fun way to use Paste Special to quickly multiply everything in a range with 1.1 (why 1.1? Well, imagine you have a report with everything in US $s and your boss wants to see the numbers in Australian $s…)

Since your report has different formulas for each cell, you can’t multiply first cell with a rate variable and drag it down. You have to manually edit each formula and add *rate at the end of it.

Oh wait…, you can use Paste Special.

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June 16, 2015