All articles with 'Learn Excel' Tag

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In the 15th session of Chandoo.org podcast, lets answer some of your burning Excel questions.

What is in this session?

Around last week, I invited you to ask me anything. More than 150 people responded to this call and sent in their questions. Since answering all the questions is not possible, I handpicked roughly 10 questions to answer in this episode of Chandoo.org podcast.

In this podcast, you will learn,

1. How to fill blank cells with data from above
2. How to work with Big data in Excel
3. How to combine data from multiple sources & analyze it in Excel
4. How I am managing my life after starting Chandoo.org
5. How to create and distribute stand-alone Excel products
6. How to control a model railroad set using Excel VBA (not fully answered)
7. & more…

Time for another round of open-mic weekend.

As you know, Chandoo.org has been running a podcast show for last few months. We have completed 14 episodes as of today. For the 15th episode, lets have an “Ask Chandoo” as the theme.

What you need to do:

Simple. Head over to ask.chandoo.org and submit your questions. You can leave me a voice-mail or post your questions

What happens next?

I will listen (or read) your questions and choose a handful for the session 15 of our podcast.

What you get:

If your question is picked up for the podcast, you will receive the 25 Excel tips e-book.

Today lets learn about Excel CHOOSE() function.
CHOOSE eh? What does it do?
To understand CHOOSE() and appreciate its uses, lets invent an imaginary boos-subordinate pair.

Jasmine is the boss. She is, well, lets call her peculiar. She likes olives, Tuesdays & color Red. She hates potatoes.

Martin is the faithful butler of Jasmine. He is obedient, quirky and tall. He likes lotuses, Fridays & color blue. He hates potassium.

Enter Jasmine’s scarf problem:

Jasmine likes to wear a different colored scarf every weekday. She likes to wear Red colored scarf on Mondays & Tuesdays. She likes to put on the blue polka dot scarf on Wednesdays. On Thursdays, she wears her olive colored scarf. On Fridays & Saturdays, she prefers the lovely orange blue scarf. Sundays are no scarf days.

No wonder she is peculiar.

This is a guest post written by Joel Zaslofsky, author of Experience Curating.

How to Make “Put It in a Spreadsheet” Who You Are (and Not Just What You Do)
It seemed like a crazy question:

Could I use my passion for Excel as motivation to transform my leaky brain from a weakness into a strength?

Sure, I already had a fifteen year love affair going with Excel.

Every other email I sent to my co-workers had an attached Excel spreadsheet. And when I wasn’t using Excel for work purposes, I was using it for grocery list templates or budget tracking.

But I had to discover the answer to my crazy question.

So I told my wife Melinda in January 2012, “Honey, this is the year I put it in a spreadsheet!”

If you listen carefully, you can hear my screams of joy. I have 2 very happy news to share with you.

1. I am speaking at Excelapalooza Excel conference, happening at Dallas (Texas) between September 21 to 24.
2. I will be conducting an Advanced Excel, Dashboards & Power Pivot masterclass at Houston (Texas) between September 15 to 18.

To all our readers & friends from USA,

I wish you a happy, fun & safe 4th of July.

For the last 4th of July (2013), we (Jo, kids & I) were in USA. We went to Washington DC to meet up a few friends for that weekend. And we had one of the most memorable evenings of our lives when we went to national mall area in the evening to watch beautifully choreographed fireworks. Kids really loved the amazing display of fire-crackers and enthusiasm.

While we all are back in India this time, it doesn’t mean we cant celebrate 4th of July. So I made some fireworks. In Excel of course.

Here is a little Excel animation I made for all of us.

4th of July Fireworks – Excel animation

First watch this quick demo (<15 secs)

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In the 12th session of Chandoo.org podcast, lets get productive fast.

Announcement: Short format podcasts sessions once a month

Based on listener feedback, I am adding short format sessions (20 mins). This short format sessions will run once a month (along with longer sessions that we publish almost every week) so that you have something light & easy to chew between heavy doses of Excel awesomeness.

I hope you like this new format. Do let me know what you think in comments.

And I really appreciate your reviews & comments on iTunes. Please click here and post your review.

Just like millions of viewers around the world, I too have been spending hours watching FIFA world cup football matches on TV. I don’t like spending hours watching TV. But when its FIFA world-cup time (which is once every 4 years), I am glued to the idiot box. Blame it on PaWaRa, my school teacher in 8th grade who instilled this passion.

So while watching the match day before yesterday (it was Holland vs. Chile), the commentator said, “This has been a world-cup of late goals” as both teams maintained 0-0 until 77 minute mark when Leroy Fer scored a goal for Holland.

That got me thinking,

Is this really a world-cup of late goals?

But I quickly brushed away the thought to focus on the match.

Later yesterday, I went looking and downloaded all the goal data for 2006, 2010 & 2014 FIFA world-cup matches (2014 data for first 36 matches).

Lets examine the hypothesis “2014 has been a world-cup of late goals”.

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If you want to create magical effect with your Excel workbook (or report, dashboard, model), then hear no further. In this episode, we explore 5 very powerful magic tricks you can apply to get jaw dropping reactions from your bosses, clients & colleagues.

In this podcast, you will learn,

• Annoucements
• Why magic
• 5 Excel Magic Tricks
• 1: Conditional formatting
• 2: Form controls + Charts
• 3: Pivot tables + Slicers
• 4: Macros + Automation
• 5: Using right feature @ right time
• How to learn these magic tricks
• Conclusions

Recently we asked you, what do you struggle doing in Excel? 170 people responded to this survey and shared their struggles. In this post, lets examine the top 10 struggles according to you and awesome remedies for them.

Last week, we learned how to use formulas to reconcile (match) transactions in Excel. Today, lets take a look at even faster and simpler way to do this:

Using Pivot Tables

Here is a short video explaining the technique and why it works. See it below

Imagine you are the head of Accounts Receivable department at a large company. Drab, I know, But humor me and imagine.

Now, every month you get a transaction report.

And you want to know which numbers are matching up.

i.e, if your company gave Vendor-0002 $872.34 on 1st of April, 2014 and your received below payments from them subsequently,

• $427.77 on 1st April
• $152.88 on 2nd April
• $291.69 on 2nd April

Then you consider the account matched since the total received is same as total payable.(427.77 + 152.88 + 291.69 = 872.34).

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This is a continuation of Session 9 – Averages are mean

In the earlier episode, we talked about AVERAGE and why it should be avoided. In this session, learn about 8 power analysis techniques that will lift your work above averages.

In this podcast, you will learn,

• Re-cap – Why avoid averages
• 8 Techniques for better analysis
• #1: Start with AVERAGE
• #2: Moving Averages
• #3: Weighted Averages
• #4: Visualize the data
• …
• Conclusions

As I am doing a road-trip across parts of southern India (we are in the beautiful temple town of Madurai as you read this post), here is something to keep you busy.

Fill in the blanks & post in comments.

I struggle doing _________________ with Excel.

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In the 9th session of Chandoo.org podcast, lets raise above AVERAGEs.

AVERAGEs are a very popular and universal way to summarize data. But do you know they are mean? Mean as in, AVERAGEs do not reveal much about your data or business. In episode 9 of Chandoo.org podcast, we tackle this problem and present solutions.

In this podcast, you will learn,

• What is AVERAGE?
• Pitfalls of averages
• 5 statistic concepts you must understand
  • Standard Deviation
  • Median
  • Quartiles
  • Outliers
  • Distribution of data
• What next?