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All articles with 'cleanup data' Tag

Convert unevenly spaced list to table [Data from Hell]

Published on Aug 30, 2017 in Power Query
Convert unevenly spaced list to table [Data from Hell]

Introducing Data from Hell:

Watch out, its data from hell. In this new video series, we are going to examine some nutty, frustrating and fun data reshaping challenges and solve them using Excel. We will use Power Query, Formulas, VBA or other features as needed to free this data from damnation.

For our first installment, let’s reshape unevenly spaced list of values to a table.

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Extract currency amounts from text – Power Query Tutorial

Published on Jul 27, 2017 in Power Query
Extract currency amounts from text – Power Query Tutorial

Let’s say you got some text values and want to extract the amounts from them. Something like above.

How to go about it?

We could use a variety of techniques to extract the values.

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Get rid of that ugly formatting with two simple tricks

Published on Jan 18, 2017 in Excel Howtos, Learn Excel
Get rid of that ugly formatting with two simple tricks

We are on a tiki tour around NZ. So far we have been to Taupo & Rotorua. And we are doing what you do when you are on a holiday – being lazy, going on walks, swimming in lakes, eating copious amounts of food and getting lost. Of course, all this means, I have very little time to access to internet & my blog. So the updates will be slow for next two weeks. Here is a quick tip (well, two of them) to keep you busy and awesome.

How to remove ugly formatting from your workbooks?

Do you have a colleague or boss (shudder) that loves to apply their special touches to every workbook their mouse lands on? Do you constantly wince and whine when you have to work on that spreadsheet.

Here are two handy ways to restore your data to its original glory.

Clear formats:

Simple, select the data you want formatting gone from, go to Home > Clear > Formats.

And Excel will weave an expelliformat spell at your data and make it clean.

Here is a quick demo.

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Untrimmable Spaces – Excel Formula

Published on Jan 12, 2017 in Excel Howtos, Learn Excel
Untrimmable Spaces – Excel Formula

Let’s talk about the untrimmable spaces.

We all know that TRIM() removes extra spaces from the beginning, ending and middle of a text.

So for example, if A1 has ” something and    one   more    ”

TRIM(A1)

will give “something and one more”

We can use CLEAN() function to remove non-printable characters (like the ASCII codes 0 to 31).  Of course, SPACE is technically a printable character, so CLEAN() won’t remove spaces.

The untrimmable spaces…?

The other day Sreekanth emailed me a sample of data and asked, “how do I remove the spaces in this list and convert them to numbers?”

Naturally I tried to TRIM().

But the data won’t budge. See above.

Hmm, let’s investigate why.

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Unpivot data quickly with Power Query [tutorial]

Published on Sep 29, 2015 in Pivot Tables & Charts, Power Query
Unpivot data quickly with Power Query [tutorial]

Power Query (Get & Transform data in Excel 2016) is a must have tool, if you wrangle with data every day. Here is a quick introduction, in case you are new.

Let’s learn how to use Power Query to unpivot data.

Essentially, we are trying to go from left to right in the above picture.

Doing something like this thru either formulas or VBA can be very complex. But Power Query can get you unpivoted data in just a few clicks. Sounds interesting? Read on.

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CP040: Intro. to Power Query – What is it and how to get started – with Miguel Escobar

Published on Jul 30, 2015 in Chandoo.org Podcast Sessions, Power Query
CP040: Intro. to Power Query – What is it and how to get started – with Miguel Escobar

In the 40th session of Chandoo.org podcast, Let’s talk about Power Query. I have the pleasure and fortune to catch up with Miguel Escobar (who along with Ken Puls runs PowerQuery.Training website) and talk about this very exciting piece of technology and how it can make our life simpler.

What is in this session?

In this podcast,

  • Welcome
  • Miguel’s introduction, background and current projects
  • What is Power Query
  • How to install it
  • Sample use cases of Power Query
  • What is Power BI
  • Resources for learning Power Query – Books & Courses
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Looking up when data won’t play nice – few more alternatives

Published on Nov 12, 2014 in Learn Excel, VBA Macros
Looking up when data won’t play nice – few more alternatives

Recently, we discussed about the case of unwieldy data and how we lookup what we want using formulas like SUMIFS. Today, let us learn few more ways to solve the same problem.

Suitable structure spawns simple solutions

Poorly structured is the 2nd biggest problem of analysts. The first one is not enough coffee. That is why there is a dictum in the data analytics world.

Structure is everything

So, we can easily solve our lookup problem, if our data were to magically re-arranged in 2 column fashion – Data & Value.

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Extract Numbers from Text using Excel VBA [Video]

Published on Jun 26, 2012 in Excel Howtos, VBA Macros
Extract Numbers from Text using Excel VBA [Video]

Last week we discussed how to extract numbers from text in Excel using formulas. In comments, quite a few people suggested that using VBA (Macros) to extract numbers would be simpler.

So today, lets learn how to write a VBA Function to extract numbers from any text.

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Extracting numbers from text in excel [Case study]

Published on Jun 19, 2012 in Excel Howtos
Extracting numbers from text in excel [Case study]

Often we deal with data where numbers are buried inside text and we need to extract them. Today morning I had such task. As you know, we recently ran a survey asking how much salary you make. We had 1800 responses to it so far. I took the data to Excel to analyze it. And surprise! the numbers are a mess. Here is a sample of the data.

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Quickly Fill Blank Cells in a Table [Reader Tip]

Published on Oct 17, 2011 in Excel Howtos
Quickly Fill Blank Cells in a Table [Reader Tip]

This post is authored by Martin, one of our readers.

Situation:

Sometimes I encounter data in my tables with blank cells where there is a repeated value from the cell directly above. See below:

This can be annoying when it comes to interpreting the data and when sorting columns.

Solution:

To know how I solve this, just read rest of the article.

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How to Convert Text to Dates [Data Cleanup]

Published on Mar 23, 2010 in Excel Howtos, Learn Excel
How to Convert Text to Dates [Data Cleanup]

Sometimes when we import data from another source in to excel, the dates are not imported properly. This can be due to any number of reasons. In this post, we will learn some tricks and ideas you can use to quickly convert text to dates.

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How do you consolidate data from multiple sheets in to one? [open thread]

Published on Feb 19, 2010 in Excel Howtos
How do you consolidate data from multiple sheets in to one? [open thread]

Long time PHD reader and mother of a lovely kid, Michelle, sent me a question in email that provoked me to write this post, I was wondering how to tabulate large amount of information gathered through surveys. Where I work customers are constantly handed survey sheets in order for us to measure how the service […]

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Fix Incorrect Percentages with this Paste-Special Trick

Published on Jan 29, 2010 in Excel Howtos
Fix Incorrect Percentages with this Paste-Special Trick

Sometimes we get values in our Excel sheets in such a way that the % sign is omitted. So instead of the value being 23%, it is 23. Now, you can very easily correct this by editing the cell and adding a % sign at the end. But what if you have 100s of rows of data. You can’t do this to every cell. (You can not just format the cells to % format either, excel shows 23 as 2300% then). There must be some simple and intuitive solution for this … umm.

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Flu Trends Chart in Excel [Yes, we can edition]

Published on Jan 22, 2010 in Charts and Graphs, Featured
Flu Trends Chart in Excel [Yes, we can edition]

Last week I have reviewed Google’s flu trends chart and told you that is it is very well made. Out of curiosity I made a similar chart in Excel. In this post, I am going to share the experience and results with you. Interested? Read on…

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One more method to find unique values in excel and you can call me a dork

Published on Feb 3, 2009 in Excel Howtos, Learn Excel
One more method to find unique values in excel and you can call me a dork

Use Excel Pivot tables to find and extract unique items in your data. This method is very fast and easily scalable.

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