Chandoo.org - Learn Excel, Power BI, Charting, Dashboards and VBA online

Latest Tips & Tutorials

VLOOKUP the last value

VLOOKUP is one of the most useful Excel functions. So much so that I even wrote a book about it. But it has one serious limitation.

It looks up the first occurrence and returns corresponding data.

What if you want to find the last value?

Say, for example, you are looking at a task assignment list and want to know what is the last task assigned to employee Emp13?

We want to extract the task “Make amazing workbook”. Of course our good old VLOOKUP stops once it finds Emp13 and returns the answer as “Create intuitive workbook”.

Read This »

August 11, 2015

Make bar charts in original order of data for improved readability [charting tip]

To make friends in a new town hit the bars – Old saying.
To make sense of a new data-set, make bar charts – New saying.

Bar charts (or column charts if you like your data straight up) are vital in data analysis. They are easy to make. But one problem. By default, a bar chart show the original data in reverse order.

See the above example.

Unfortunately, we humans read from top to bottom, not the other way around.

Read This »

August 10, 2015

Declutter your reports by showing icon only

Conditional formatting is one of the most powerful & awesome features of Excel. It is very easy to setup. Naturally, people use it extensively. But the default conditional formatting rules can clutter your reports. Here is one tip that can declutter your reports.

Just show the formatting, not values.

See the above report.

Read This »

August 9, 2015

Use shapes to enhance your Excel charts [tip]

Here is a simple way to enhance your Excel charts – use shapes & pictures in your charts.

We will learn how to create something like above.

Looks interesting? Read on…

Read This »

August 8, 2015

Remove duplicate combinations in your data [quick tip]

By now, we know how to remove duplicates from data. You can use the Remove Duplicates button to do that.

But do you know that we can use remove duplicates button to get rid off duplicate combinations too?

Remove duplicate combinations – Tutorial

To remove duplicate combinations in your data, just follow below 4 steps:

Select your data
Click on Data > Remove Duplicates button
Make sure all columns are checked
Click ok and done!

See this demo:

Read This »

August 7, 2015

CP041: 6 charts you’ll see in hell – v2.0

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | RSS

In the 41st session of Chandoo.org podcast, Let’s take a trip to data hell and meet 6 ugly, clumsy, confusing charts. I am revisiting a classic Chandoo.org article – 6 Charts you will see in hell.

What is in this session?

In this podcast,

Quick announcement about Awesome August
6 charts you should avoid
3D charts
Pie / donut charts with too many slices
Too much data
Over formatting
Complex charts
Charts that don’t tell a story
Conclusions

Read This »

August 6, 2015

Save time with custom ribbons in Excel [tutorial]

A significant portion of our time in Excel is spent navigating between various ribbon tabs and clicking buttons. Wouldn’t it be better if you can combine all the frequently used features in to one ribbon? Something like above:

Read on to learn how to create, edit and share custom ribbons in Excel.

Read This »

August 5, 2015

Calculate sum of top 10 values [formulas + homework]

Analyzing top n (or bottom m) items is an important part of any data analysis exercise. In this article, we are going to learn Excel formulas to help you with that.

Let’s say you are the lead analyst at a large retail chain in Ohio, USA. You are looking at the latest sales data for all the 300 stores. You want to calculate the total sales of top 10 stores. Read on to learn the techniques.

Read This »

August 4, 2015