All articles with 'Learn Excel' Tag

Last week, we had our very first quiz – “How well do you know your LOOKUPs?”. I hope you have enjoyed it.

Today lets understand the answers & explanations for this quiz.

As you may new, the newest version of Excel is out for a while. I have been using it since last 6 months and enjoying it. Today, lets understand 10 things in 2013 that wowed me (and probably you too).

Sometimes you think you know something and then suddenly you are surprised. Yesterday was such a moment for me. I have been using Excel for almost a decade now. So naturally I assumed that I know it well. But then yesterday, while doing something I stumbled on a strange screen in Excel that looked like very popular Angry birds game. So I got searching. But there was no mention of it anywhere on net. Then I asked my friend Rollf ‘O’ Pai, who is in Micros0ft Execl team. First he denied such a thing. But we knew each other so well that he could never lie to me. So he confided. He told me what I had suspected for several years.

There is an Angry birds like video game buried in Excel!!! It was meant to be an Easter egg in Excel 2010 (and 2013), but due to backlash from senior management no one ever published the details about it.

So I asked him “How do I unlock it?”. Rollf ‘O’ Pai asked me to never reveal it to anyone and then told me the recipe.

Once I unlocked I could not believe how cool it is!

Read on to understand how to unlock this game.

Do not worry, you are not time traveling or seeing things. Its just that, this year I have decided to publish our Easter Egg a few days early.

And oh, I have 3 reasons for it:

1. 2 of my favorite festivals – Easter & Holi (a festival of colors, celebrated in India) are this week. Holi is today (Wednesday) & Easter on Sunday.
2. My kids are super excited about Holi as this is the first time they will be playing it. So we have family time from today until Wednesday and I do not feel like writing a blog entry on Friday 🙂
3. I like to have 3 reasons for everything.

Hence the Easter Egg is advanced a few days. But it is just as fun (or may be better) as previous Easter eggs.

So you think you know VLOOKUP formula? Well, test your knowledge.

Click here to take our first ever quiz – on Look up formulas.

Here is an interesting question someone asked me recently,

If I have to delete all rows with “John” in it. Do you know how to do it?

Well, it looks like they really hate John. But it is none of my business.

So lets go ahead and understand a dead-simple way to get rid of all cells with John or whoever else you fancy.

When comparing 2 sets of data, one question we always ask is,

• How is first set of numbers different from second set?

A classic example of this is, lets say you are comparing productivity figures of your company with industry averages. Merely seeing both your series as lines (or columns etc.) is not going to tell you the full story. But if we can shade our productivity line in red or green when it is under or above industry average… now that would be awesome! Something like above.

Today lets tackle a familiar data clean-up problem using Excel – Transposing data.

That is, we want to take all rows in our data & make them columns. Something like this:

Learn these 4 techniques to transpose data:
1. Using Paste Special > Transpose
2. Using INDEX formula & Helper cells
3. Using INDEX, ROWS & COLUMNS formulas
4. Using TRANSPOSE Formula

Hello folks,

If this article was a person, they would be schizophrenic. You see, it has 2 purposes:

• Give you all the details about my upcoming Power Pivot course
• Give you a solution to last week’s vacation days problem

Details about Power Pivot Course
Power Pivot, an Excel add-in makes it easy to connect, analyze & visualize massive amounts of data. This course aims to teach you how to use Power Pivot to analyze data, create advanced reports & prepare dashboards all from familiar interface of Excel. This is ideal for data analysts, reporting & MIS professionals, business analysts, managers & dashboard makers.

A measure is a formula for the values area of Power Pivot table.

A measure can be implicit or explicit.

Implicit measures are created automatically when you drag and drop a field in to Power Pivot values area. For example, in last week’s introduction, we created an implicit measure for SUM of Sales by dragging and dropping the sales amount field in to values area of our power pivot table.

Explicit measures are created by you using New measure button in Power Pivot tab (or Calculated Field button in Excel 2013 Power Pivot tab). You can also create a measure in the Power Pivot window.

Learn what measures are, how to create them using DAX (Data Analysis Expression) formulas in this video tutorial.

Its Friday, that means time for another Excel challenge for you.

Calculate vacation days in a period:

Your mission, if you choose to accept it,

Step 1: Download the hom work problem file.

Step 2: Calculate number of vacations taken in a period. Specifically,

1) How many vacations are taken between start & end dates, assuming complete vacation should be inside the start & end date period?
2) How many vacations are taken such that at least one day of vacation is between start & end dates?
3) How many people took vacations? (if same person took multiple vacations, then count it as 1)

Today, lets talk about Power Pivot & understand it.
What is Power Pivot?
Power Pivot is an Excel add-in to connect, analyze & visualize massive amounts of data..

Lets take a closer look at the definition.

Connect: You can use multiple tables of data & set up relationships between them using Power Pivot. For example, you can connect customer details to sales transactions so that you can summarize sales by customer location or gender easily.

Analyze: You can create simple pivot table style reports or create something exceedingly complex by defining your own calculated fields for values area of the pivot. There is a whole set of formulas defined for exactly this purpose, called as DAX formulas.

Visualize: Instantly filter your reports using slicers, time lines (Excel 2013 or above only), conditional formats, pivot charts etc. You can even define KPIs and see the performance in bands.

Massive Amounts of Data: Although your typical Excel worksheet contains a million rows, if you tried to load even half of those with any data, Excel would quickly become slow & lazy. Power Pivot can take a million rows for breakfast and would be hungry for more. It can processes millions of rows of data very quickly and easily, all from the comfort of a standard desktop or laptop.

Few weeks ago, someone asked me “What are the top 10 formulas?” That got me thinking.

While each of us have our own list of favorite, most frequently used formulas, there is no standard list of top 10 formulas for everyone. So, today let me attempt that.

If you want to become a data or business analyst then you must develop good understanding of Excel formulas & become fluent in them.

A good analyst should be familiar with below 10 formulas to begin with.

Here is a quick tip to start your week. Ever wanted to insert a few columns in between like this? Here is how to do it. Hold down control key. Select one column at a time Right click and choose Insert Done! Bonus tip: You can use this to insert rows too! More Quick tips.

Dear readers & supporters of Chandoo.org,

I am very glad to announce that our brand new online course – “Finance for non-finance people” is now available for your consideration. Please take a few minutes to read this short message to understand what this program is & how it benefits you. If you are ready to join, please click here.

What is Finance for Non-finance people course?

This course aims to teach financial fundamentals & introduce you to the world financial analysis in a no-nonsense way.

We start by introducing financial analysis and the basic jargon. Then we talk about 3 important components of any company’s finances – Balance Sheet, Income Statement & Cash flow Statement.

Then we discuss about various analytical techniques like ratio analysis, valuation mechanisms, break-even analysis.

Finally we explain advanced accounting concepts like long-lived assets, depreciation, explore trend analysis and unit economics.

In a nut-shell, this course takes someone with no finance background and makes them proficient in world of finance.