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All articles with 'Microsoft Excel Formulas' Tag

What is XLOOKUP? 13 formula examples to really understand it

Published on Mar 17, 2021 in Excel Howtos
What is XLOOKUP? 13 formula examples to really understand it

Office 365 now boasts a powerful successor to the VLOOKUP function – XLOOKUP formula. Think of XLOOKUP as VLOOKUP 2.0. In this article, learn all about the function, syntax, optional parameters and 13 xlookup examples.

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5 Simple & Useful Conditional Formatting Tricks

Published on Feb 15, 2021 in Learn Excel
5 Simple & Useful Conditional Formatting Tricks

Oh, I *LOVE* conditional formatting. It is such a powerful feature. In this post, let me share 5 of my favorite CF secrets with you all.

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Excel formula to convert calendar format to table

Published on Sep 3, 2020 in Learn Excel
Excel formula to convert calendar format to table

Got some data in a calendar format and just wished you can get it in tabular format?

You can use Excel formulas or Power Query to do this. In this article, let’s review formula based approach with two excellent choices.

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Highlight due dates in Excel – Show items due, overdue and completed in different colors

Published on May 18, 2020 in Excel Howtos, Learn Excel
Highlight due dates in Excel – Show items due, overdue and completed in different colors

Congratulations to you if your job does not involve dead lines. For the rest of us, deadlines are the sole motivation for working (barring free internet & the coffee machine in 2nd floor, of course). So today, lets talk about a very familiar problem.

How to highlight due dates in Excel?

The item can be an invoice, a to do activity, a project or anything. So how would you do it using Excel?

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Excel Dynamic Array Functions – What are they, how to use them, Examples and FAQs

Published on Apr 11, 2020 in Learn Excel
Excel Dynamic Array Functions – What are they, how to use them, Examples and FAQs

Excel Dynamic Array Functions are a true game changer. These newly introduced DA functions can filter, sort, remove duplicates and do much more. The output of these functions can go to a range of cells. Hence the name – dynamic array functions.

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Make a random sentence with Excel formulas

Published on Jan 28, 2020 in Learn Excel
Make a random sentence with Excel formulas

Ever wanted to make a random sentence or text? You can use Excel formulas to make totally random sentences. This is a great way to generate test data or dummy data-sets.

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Weighted Average in Excel [Formulas]

Published on Sep 19, 2019 in Learn Excel
Weighted Average in Excel [Formulas]

Learn how to calculate weighted averages in excel using formulas. In this article we will learn what a weighted average is and how to Excel’s SUMPRODUCT formula to calculate weighted average / weighted mean.

What is weighted average?

Wikipedia defines weighted average as, “The weighted mean is similar to an arithmetic mean …, where instead of each of the data points contributing equally to the final average, some data points contribute more than others.”

Calculating weighted averages in excel is not straight forward as there is no built-in formula. But we can use SUMPRODUCT formula to easily calculate them. Read on to find out how.

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#awesome trick – Extract word by position using FILTERXML()

Published on Sep 12, 2019 in Excel Howtos, Learn Excel
#awesome trick – Extract word by position using FILTERXML()

This is CRAZY!!!. I stumbled on a weird use for FILTERXML() while reading a forum post earlier today. So I couldn’t wait to test it. I am happy to share the results.

Say you have some text (sentence / phrase / keyword etc.) in a cell and you want to extract the nth word. Unfortunately Excel doesn’t have SPLIT() formula. So we end up writing obscenely long array formulas or use gazillion helper columns.

Here is the super sneaky trick. Use FILTERXML() instead.

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How to trace precedents in Excel formulas? [tip+music from Prague]

Published on May 22, 2019 in Excel Howtos
How to trace precedents in Excel formulas? [tip+music from Prague]

Here is a very useful and almost secret Excel tip for you. Imagine you are looking at a big, complex workbook with lots of calculations. You want to understand where everything is pointing to and how the workbook is set up.

You can use trace precedents in Excel to do this. Read this tip to learn how it works.

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VLOOKUP multiple matches – trick

Published on Apr 16, 2019 in Excel Howtos, Learn Excel
VLOOKUP multiple matches – trick

We all know that VLOOKUP can find first match and return the results. But what if you want all the matches? Use this simple trick instead.

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Top 10 Excel Formulas for any situation

Published on Mar 27, 2019 in Learn Excel
Top 10 Excel Formulas for any situation

Excel has hundreds of formulas. But as a new learner or user, you may want to just focus on top 10 formulas to get the most out of it. Assuming you already know the basics (check out Beginner Excel page if you are complete newbie), here is a list of top 10 Excel formulas for you.

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Quickly Change Formulas Using Find / Replace

Published on Feb 28, 2019 in Learn Excel
Quickly Change Formulas Using Find / Replace

So you have built that excel report your boss wanted. And you were all eager to use the spreadsheet in your presentation. But in the last minute, your boss asked you to change average sales to total sales figures. You also want to grab an espresso before rushing to the meeting. Now what?

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Elevator problem – Excel homework

Published on Dec 13, 2018 in Excel Challenges
Elevator problem – Excel homework

The other day while I was in lift (elevator), it made an alarm like sound and won’t close the doors. Turns out there are one too many people in the lift for it to operate safely. As soon as a couple of people volunteered and stepped out, it started fighting gravity and took us upstairs. […]

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How many people used their entire sick leave entitlement? [Power Query / Excel homework]

Published on Sep 21, 2018 in Excel Challenges
How many people used their entire sick leave entitlement? [Power Query / Excel homework]

Imagine you are the HR analyst at BigLargeCompany. You are asked to find out whether staff at BLC (BigLargeCompany you silly) use up their full sick leave entitlement.

You have two tables – emps & leaves as illustrated below.

sample data - sick leave entitlement vs. usage

Your mission is to find out answers to below questions.

  • How many employees used exactly 100% of their entitled sick leave?
  • How many employees did not take any sick leaves?
  • Listing of all employees who used 100% of their entitlement

 

Use either Power Query, Excel formulas or any other technique to answer the questions.

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Calculate travel time and distance between two addresses using Excel + Maps API

Published on Jul 19, 2018 in Excel Howtos
Calculate travel time and distance between two addresses using Excel + Maps API

Ever wanted to calculate distance using Excel  – between two locations (physical addresses)? If we know the addresses, we can go to either Google Maps or Bing Maps and type them out to find the distance and travel time. But what if you are building some model (or calculator) and want to find out the […]

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