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All articles with 'data validation' Tag

How do Business Analysts use Excel [Guest Post from a Rock-star BA]

Published on Feb 2, 2011 in interviews, Learn Excel
How do Business Analysts use Excel [Guest Post from a Rock-star BA]

This is a guest article by Matt, who works as a Business Analyst with allrecipes.com. He shares with us how he is using Excel to become a rockstar business analyst. In his own words,

“At Allrecipes.com we use excel for a variety of purposes. Analyzing site trends, forecasting traffic, charts, dashboards, and slide shows; you name it, we use excel for it. That’s why Chandoo’s tips have been so helpful – because we use excel every day. Thanks to chandoo.org, I’ve developed a reputation as an “excel wizard” and even taught a 4 week excel training class!

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Mix VLOOKUP with Data Validation for some magic! [VLOOKUP Week]

Published on Nov 1, 2010 in Learn Excel
Mix VLOOKUP with Data Validation for some magic! [VLOOKUP Week]

Situation

Sometimes we don’t know what we want. If this happens when I am in a bar, I usually order a cocktail. Just a mix of everything. The same will work in Excel too.

For eg. If you have lots of data, but the value you want to look up needs to change based on whims and fancies of your users, then you can resort to a cocktail. A mix of VLOOKUP with Drop down lists (Data validation)

Read more to find how to solve this.

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Putting it all together – Final Project Evaluation Model [Part 6 of 6]

Published on Sep 21, 2010 in Financial Modeling, Learn Excel

This is a guest post written by Paramdeep from Pristine. Chandoo.org is partnering with Pristine to bring an excel financial modeling online training program for you. This is Part 6 of 6 on Financial Modeling using Excel In this tutorial we are going to learn how to build assumptions & input sheets in our excel […]

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Make your data validations dynamic! [quick tip]

Published on Sep 13, 2010 in Excel Howtos
Make your data validations dynamic! [quick tip]

Ok, since excel school 3rd batch is going to open on 15th, I wasnt going to write anything today. I have slept just 4 hours last night, blame it on work (and that funny video on youtube). But I found 30 minutes free time, so here you go, a quick but delicious tip on making your data validation dynamic.

Dynamic Data Validation?!? What in the name of slice bread and peanut butter is that?

See the demo aside to understand and read on to master the trick.

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Football Betting Sheet Template

Published on Jun 9, 2010 in excel apps, Learn Excel
Football Betting Sheet Template

While I was working Denmark, there is one thing I noticed. Danes are one hell of football lovers. The football (soccer) enthusiasm is over the top when there is a match between Denmark and Sweden. A common practice in many offices is a football pool. This is how it works: When there is a match […]

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How to Get “Either-Or” Condition in Data Validation?

Published on May 4, 2010 in Learn Excel
How to Get “Either-Or” Condition in Data Validation?

In a recent consulting assignment I had a tricky data validation problem. The customer wanted to have an either-or condition in the data validation, like this: My initial reaction to this requirement was “hmm… that is not possible“. But before shooting the email back to client, I got curious and checked if excel data validation […]

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Automatic Rolling Months in Excel [Formulas]

Published on Apr 6, 2010 in Excel Howtos, Learn Excel
Automatic Rolling Months in Excel [Formulas]

Often when we are making spreadsheets for forecasting or planning we would like to keep the starting month dynamic so that rest of the months in the plan can automatically rolled. Don’t understand? See this example: This type of setup is quite useful as it lets us change the starting month very easily. We can […]

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How to Visualize Survey Results using Incell Panel Charts [case study]

Published on Apr 1, 2010 in Charts and Graphs, Featured, Learn Excel
How to Visualize Survey Results using Incell Panel Charts [case study]

A panel chart (often called as trellis display or small-multiples) shows data for multiple variables in an easy to digest format. It lets users compare in any way and draw conclusions with ease.

Today, I want to discuss how the principles of panel chart can be applied to visualize a complex set of survey results. For this we will use the recent survey conducted by Gartner on how various customers use BI (Business Intelligence) tools.

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Making a Dynamic Dashboard in Excel [Part 2 of 4]

Published on Mar 30, 2010 in Charts and Graphs, Learn Excel
Making a Dynamic Dashboard in Excel [Part 2 of 4]

In part 2 of Excel Dynamic Dashboard Tutorial, we will learn how to set up various dynamic charts that are part of the dashboard. We start with a simple dynamic pie chart that shows the sales distributions and then move on to sales trend line charts. These charts use various excel formulas to pull in the information based on user selection.

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31 Excel Tutorials – Learn and Be Awesome in Excel

Published on Mar 11, 2010 in Charts and Graphs, Featured, Learn Excel
31 Excel Tutorials – Learn and Be Awesome in Excel

In October 2008, I have started an ambitious series of posts on this blog called – Spreadcheats. These are little tricks, nuggets, tutorials on using Excel that would make anyone a spreadsheet guru.

The spreadcheats series has been wildly successful. I am compiling all this useful information and articles in to one big post so that anyone can follow the links and become good in Excel. Read on,

[Note: This is not for beginners. If you know what a formula is, you would enjoy this 31 articles]

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Data Validation using an Unsorted column with Duplicate Entries as a Source List

Published on Feb 2, 2010 in Learn Excel
Data Validation using an Unsorted column with Duplicate Entries as a Source List

Here is a typical scenario: We want to allow only one of the pre-defined customer names in our spreadsheet. We have listed down all the customers in column B and want excel to check against this list and validate the data. But there are 3 problems. (1) Our list is not sorted alphabetically (2) It contains duplicates and (3) The list comes from external source, so we can not remove duplicates and sort the list every time.

Now how can we set up a simple data validation list that would not repeat customer names and shows them in sorted order like this.

Read the rest of this guest post by Hui to learn how to use data validation in creative new ways.

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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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10 Tips to Make Better and Boss-proof Excel Spreadsheets

Published on Nov 3, 2009 in Excel Howtos, Featured, Learn Excel
10 Tips to Make Better and Boss-proof Excel Spreadsheets

We all have atleast one story of how that one time the boss / co-worker / classmate / cat ruined the carefully crafted excel spreadsheet by mucking up the formulas or disturbing the formatting. Read this post to learn 10 awesome excel tips to make better and boss-proof excel sheets.

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Copy Data Validations from one cell to another [quick tip]

Published on Oct 28, 2009 in Excel Howtos
Copy Data Validations from one cell to another [quick tip]

If only there is paste special for everything in life, things would be much more smoother and fun. Alas, the paste special is limited only to excel.

Here is a handy trick you can use to quickly scale up data validations set up in one cell to say a range of cells.

Just copy the cell by pressing CTRL+C and then go to the target cell(s) and press ALT+ESN. And your data validations are pasted in the new cells. That is all. Quick and Easy.

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Prevent Duplicate Data Entry using Cell Validations

Published on Oct 26, 2009 in Excel Howtos
Prevent Duplicate Data Entry using Cell Validations

We all know that data validation is a very useful feature in Excel. You can use data validation to create a drop-down list in a cell and limit the values user can enter. But, do you know that you can use data validation in a multitude of ways to prevent users from entering wrong data?

Here is a practical application: Prevent users from entering duplicate values in a range of cells.

For eg. you are making an invoice. Wouldn’t it be cool if Excel prompted you when you enter a duplicate line item so that increase the item quantity instead of repeating it.

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