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Latest Tips & Tutorials

Ensure cleaner input dates with conditional formatting [quick tip]

Here is a familiar problem: You create a workbook to track some data. You ask your staff to fill up the data. Almost all the

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May 12, 2015

How would you train your boss to use Excel better? [Weekend Survey]

I am in Sydney and yesterday we had a meetup of Sydney Excel users. Around 15 people turned up for the event and we talked about various Excel related topics over few drinks. One of the questions that came up was,

I learn and use Excel in better ways. But my boss doesn’t how to open the workbook and use simple stuff like filters, slicers, sorting and selecting. So I end up sending screenshots or PDFs instead of powerful Excel files. What to do?

Although we discussed various possible solutions to the problem, I thought it would be a good topic for us discuss here.

So how would you train your boss to use Excel?

Please share your thoughts, experiments, experiences and suggestions in the comments. Let’s make our bosses awesome.

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May 8, 2015

Use arrow keys to select small, unreachable chart series [quick tip]

Here is a fairly annoying problem.

Imagine a chart showing both sales & customer data. Sales numbers are large and customer numbers are small. So when you make a chart with both of these, selecting the smaller series (customers) becomes very difficult.

In such cases, you can use arrow keys – as shown above.

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April 30, 2015

Santa Clara Chronicles [personal]

Note: This is a not an Excel tips post. It is a dairy of one of the most awesome conferences I have ever attended.

I just finished attending PASS Business Analytics conference in Santa Clara (USA) and am now heading back home to India. And it has been one of the most fun, uplifting and educational experiences of my life. I met so many remarkable people in this trip.

Read on for some pics & gossip.

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April 27, 2015

CP034: Advanced Excel Essentials book talk with Jordan Goldmeier

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

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In the 34th session of Chandoo.org podcast, Let’s hear from Jordan Goldmeier – my friend, fellow blogger, Excel blogger & author. After many years of interaction thru email, blogs, Skype calls, finally I met him at PASS BA conference at Santa Clara this week. He gave me a copy of his new book – Advanced Excel Essentials and I immediately asked him to do a podcast. So here we go.

What is in this session?

In this podcast,

Introduction
What is this book all about
Sample chapter review – User forms
Design principles for creating advanced user interactions
How to become advanced Excel user – pathway recommended by Jordan
More info about Jordan
A secret for you

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April 23, 2015

Find and Highlight all blank cells in your data [Excel tips]

True story:

On Friday (17th April – 2015), I flew from Vizag (my town) to Hyderabad so that I can catch a flight to San Francisco to attend a conference. As I had 10 hours of overlay between the flights in Hyderabad, I checked in to a lounge area so that I can watch some sports, eat food while pretending to do work on my laptop. There was a gentleman sitting in adjacent space doing some work in Excel. As I began to compose few emails, the gentleman in next sitting space asked me what I do for living. Our conversation went like this.

Me: I run a software company
He: Oh, so you must be good with computers
Me: smiles and cringes at the stereotyping
He: What is the formula to select all the blank cells in my Excel data and highlight them in Yellow color

Mind you, he had no idea that I work in Excel. We were 2 random guys in airport lounge watching sports and eating miserable food.

Me: Well, what are you trying to do?
He: You see, I am auditing this data. I need to locate all the blank rows and set them in different color so that my staff can fill up missing information. Right now, I am selecting one row at a time and filling the colors. Is there a one step solution to this problem?

Needless to say, I showed him how to do it faster, which led to an interesting 3 hours at the lounge.

End of true story.

So today, let’s understand how to find & highlight all the blank cells in the data.

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April 20, 2015

How to insert a blank column in pivot table?

We all know pivot table functionality is a powerful & useful feature. But it comes with some quirks. For example, we cant insert a blank row or column inside pivot tables.

So today let me share a few ideas on how you can insert a blank column.

But first let’s try inserting a column

Imagine you are looking at a pivot table like above.

And you want to insert a column or row. Go ahead and try it.

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April 16, 2015

Excel Links – PASS BA 2015 Edition

In about 3 days, I am leaving to USA for participating in PASS Business Analytics conference – 2015. It is an annual event for people in analytics profession. This is the first time I am attending & speaking at the event. I am so excited for many reasons.

I will be meeting many Excel bloggers, authors & internet friends for the first time
I will be meeting many of you (readers, listeners, followers & customers of Chandoo.org) too
I will be speaking at an awesome conference
I will be visiting San Francisco for the first time in life
I will be meeting a few college friends too

All this excitement means, I have too much going on. But that shouldn’t leave you out . So here are a few awesome Excel links for you. Check out and learn.

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April 14, 2015