All articles with 'microsoft' Tag

Validating your data as you type can prevent any surprises when you are doing analysis / follow-up on the data. Thankfully, excel has the right tools to do it. Excel drop down list can assist you in picking up a value from a valid list to enter in a cell. Here is a short how-to […]

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?

Excel date time features are very handy and knowing how to use Excel date values can help you save a ton of time in your day to day spreadsheet chores. Let us prepare for your date with the sheet using these 10 handy tips.

Before jumping on to the tips, it helps to know how excel represents the date and time.

Microsoft Excel stores dates as sequential numbers … January 1, 1900 is serial number 1, and 20 June, 2018 is serial number 43271 because it is 43,271 days after January 1, 1900. Excel stores times as decimal fractions because time is considered a portion of a day. [Excel Help Text on Date / Time]

So you see, Date and Time are in fact numbers in Excel. Just enter a date in your excel sheet and format it as number to see its equivalent numeric value. If a date is 20-June-2018 and excel represents it as 43271.

VLOOKUP may not make you tall, rich and famous, but learning it can certainly give you wings. It makes you to connect two different tabular lists and saves a ton of time. In my opinion understanding VLOOKUP, INDEX and MATCH worksheet formulas can transform you from normal excel user to a data processing beast. Today, […]

Hello Data Junkies & Chart Lovers, I have a fun announcement for you. If you like to analyze data and present results in charts, then you can win up to $3000 in prizes by participating in Microsoft’s BI DataMashUp Contest. The contest is on from September 8th and runs until 28th. How to Participate in […]

Dear Readers & Friends, I am very happy to announce that Excel School online training program is now available for your consideration. Please read this short post to understand what you will get when you sign-up for this program and how you can join. What will you get when you join? Access to Private Member-only […]

Timeline charts are great for providing quick snapshots of historical events. And hardly a day goes by without some one making a cool visualization of a time line of this or that. Time lines are easy to read, present information in a logical manner and mostly fun.

So yesterday, I set out to mimic the iconic gadgets of all time in excel, just for fun. Then it strike me, why not make a visual time line of Microsoft Excel ? So I did that instead.

We all know how to make comments on excel documents, just select the cell where you want a comment, press SHIFT+F2 and make the comment. But the comments are only visible when you open the workbook. What if you want to print out an excel file, but include all the comments as well?

Turns out you can do that with a hidden option in excel page setup.

At PHD household, we believe in using money wisely. Both Mrs. PHD and I come from very modest backgrounds. Our upbringing has taught us value of money in the most effective way – by exposing us to not having any. So when we got our first job (did I tell you that both Jo and I started working in same company and sat in same floor? Oh, it was such a lovely time), we were very prudent and decided not to waste money on anything trivial (we still are, just that over last 6 years our earning capacity increased a bit and we became parents).

Anyways, I am not here to bore you about my household. But I am here to tell you fun ways to track expenses and household budgets using spreadsheets.

Today I want to introduce Excel 2010 to you. Excel 2010 is the latest version of spreadsheet software from Microsoft, set to be released for sale in late 2010. On Nov 18th, MS released the public beta of Excel 2010 [download here] along with other Office productivity software.

Excel 2010 has several improvements compared to earlier version – Excel 2007. In this post, I want to highlight some of the User Interface improvements made in Excel 2010 that are very exciting and fun to use.

Finally the public beta of Office 2010 is out. Go to Office Beta site and download the installation today. Make sure you select the “custom” installation option and choose to “keep the old versions”, otherwise the beta will upgrade your office installation. (Beta installation expires by October 2010) Here is a brief list of new […]

Today we will learn a new and exciting excel formula – the all powerful SUMPRODUCT.

At the outset SUMPRODUCT formula may not seem like all that useful. But once you understand how excel works with lists (or arrays) of data, the SUMPRODUCT’s relevance becomes crystal clear.

It has been a really long time since we have an excel links post here. That doesnt mean I am not reading anything exciting. It is just that I have gotten busy being a dad. But now that I am in to a saner schedule, we are bringing back the excel links. Here is a […]

Anyone working on the data using excel will know the importance of lookup formulas. They are vital for making almost any spreadsheet or dashboard. That is why when my friend John Franco, who maintains Excel-Spreadsheet-Authors.com, wrote to me about his new book Excel lookup toolbox I was truly excited. In this post I am going to share my review of this product.

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.