All articles with 'list posts' Tag

Power Pivot for Excel has come a long way since it was introduced in late 2009. In the last 4 years not only has the technology matured, but also became a standard reporting platform in many businesses. As a smart analyst (or manager), you will gain a lot of mileage by adding this vital skill to your resume.

Today, let me show 5 reasons why you should learn Power Pivot this year.

Sometime during the 2nd half of 2013, I finished 10 years of Excel usage. In the last 10 years, I completed my studies, got my first job, married, had kids, visited 15 different countries, quit my job to start a business, bought first car, first house, made dozens of new friends, read 100s of books, wrote a book and learned 1000s of new things. And all along, Excel stayed a true companion. Right from MBA entrance exam preparation in 2003 to making my summer internship project reports in 2005 to planning my wedding expenses in 2007 to getting a promotion in 2009 to planning my kids feeding schedule in 2010 to running a successful business in 2014, Excel helped me in every step.

So today, I want to tell you the top 10 things I learned using Excel in last decade. Grab a hot cup of coffee, buckle your belts and get ready for time travel.

This year has been busiest year since inception of Chandoo.org. Wow, that is 10 years in a row of breaking previous records.

We had 101 posts, 7,400+ comments this year. Since our forum went thru a migration, I could not gather exact stats for forum. We have trained more than 2,500 people thru my online classes – Excel School, VBA Classes & Power Pivot classes.

More than 7.5 million people visited our site in last 1 year (up 14%) and consumed a whopping 20 million pages (up 16%). Each of these visitors spent an average of 2 minutes 21 seconds on our site becoming awesome in Excel. There are 1.8 million people who spent at least 15 minutes on our site.

We have added more than 25,000 members to our newsletter / RSS reader community, crossing 80,000 mark. It is a busy year.

Read on to find the best of Chandoo.org in 2013.

We are almost at the end of 2013. Time to review how much more awesome we became this year. Today let me ask you a very simple question.

What is the coolest Excel trick you have learned this year?

Go ahead and post your answers using comments.

Today, let’s travel in time. Pack your photon ray guns, extra underwear, buckle your seat belts and open Excel!

Of course, we are not going to travel in time. (Come to think of it, we are going to travel in time. By the time you finish reading this, you would have traveled a few minutes)

We are going to learn how to travel in time when using Excel. In simple terms, you are going to learn how to move forward or backward in time using Excel formulas.

So are you ready to hit the warp speed? Let’s beam up our Excel time machine.

Today lets get cozy. Lets start a fling (a very long one). Lets do something that will make you smart, happy and relaxed.

Don’t get any naughty ideas. I am talking about INDEX() formula.

INDEX?!?

Of all the hundreds of formulas & thousands of features in Excel, INDEX() would rank somewhere in the top 5 for me. It is a versatile, powerful, simple & smart formula. Although it looks plain, it can make huge changes to the way you analyze data, calculate numbers and present them. It is so important that, whenever I teach (live or online), I usually dedicate 25% of teaching time to INDEX().

Enough build up. Lets get cozy with INDEX.

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).

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.

This year has been the busiest year since the inception of Chandoo.org. We had 161 posts, 8,900+ comments, 33,500+ forum posts. We have trained more than 2,500 students thru training programs like Excel School & VBA Classes this year alone. More than 6.5 million people visited our site this year (up 82%),  consuming a whopping […]

Lets talk round numbers today.I have 18.2 tips for you on round numbers.

We can use a variety of formulas to round numbers in Excel depending on the situation. We have ROUND, ROUNDUP, ROUNDDOWN, MROUND, INT, TRUNC, CEILING, FLOOR, FIXED, EVEN, ODD and few more. To know how to use all these formulas and how to round numbers based on any criteria, just read on.

Our guest author, Myles Arnott discusses what Best Practice Modeling is and offers 5 practical, easy to implement tips to get you started.

Best Practice Tip #1: Apply a modeling life cycle
Best Practice Tip #2: Give structure to your spreadsheets
Best Practice Tip #3: Make cells consistent based on their behavior
Best Practice Tip #4: Use similar formulas
Best Practice Tip #5: Build error checks in to your models

Read on…

Recently, we published 66 dashboards visualizing Excel salaries around the world. Each of the contestants have put in great effort and hand-crafted these beauties. Now its time we picked a winner.

How does the voting work?

The voting has 2 components

1. Readers (that is you) pick a winner and runner-up using online voting.
2. Judges (2 of them) will also pick winners. Judges vote carries 20% weight.

Everyone likes to be in control. Even my 2 year old daughter jumps with joy when she lays her hands on TV remote. She pushes the buttons and assumes it is working. It is another story that we rarely watch TV at home.

By adding an element of control, we can make our dashboard reports fun. Interactive elements like form controls, slicers etc. invite users to play with your dashboard, get involved and understand data by asking questions. That is why I recommend making dashboards interactive.

Today lets understand how you can make dashboards interactive.

Ladies & gentleman, put on your helmets. This is going to be mind-blowingly awesome.

See how many different ways are there to analyze Excel salary data. Look at these 66 fantastic, beautifully crafted dashboards and learn how to one up your dashboard awesomeness quotient.

This week many Excel bloggers are celebrating VLOOKUP week. So I wanted to chip in and give you a comprehensive guide to VLOOKUP & Other lookup formulas. Read on …,

What is VLOOKUP Formula & how to use it?

I often tell my excel school students that learning VLOOKUP formulas will change your basic approach towards data. You will suddenly feel that you have discovered a superman cape in your attic. It is that awesome.