Excel Roundup 20140331

Last week, three Office apps were released for the iPad – Excel, Word and Powerpoint. Have you downloaded any of the apps, and tried using them?

If you’re not sure whether to download them, you can read Ed Bott’s review of the new apps – he’s quite impressed by them. Bill Jelen (Mr. Excel) also reviewed the Excel app, and you can see his report here. Bill lists what’s in the apps, and what’s missing.

In the video below, there is a short interview with Han-Yi Shaw, head of Microsoft’s Office Design Studio. For more details, click here to read the Mashable interview.

Contextures Posts

Here’s what I posted last week:

• In one of my files, an image changed size after previewing the worksheet. No idea why it happened, but a simple tweak fixed the problem.

• You can create two types of formulas in a pivot table – calculated items and calculated fields. See what the differences are, and an example of how to use them.

• While working with pivot tables, I ran into the least informative error message that I’ve ever seen in Excel.

• Finally, for a humorous peek at what other people are saying about Excel, read this week’s collection of Excel tweets, on my Excel Theatre blog.

Other Excel Articles

Here are a few of the Excel articles that I read last week, that you might find useful:

• Jon Peltier shows how to make a specific chart label a different colour, using formulas, instead of programming.

• Sharepoint MVP, John White, warns not to update your Power Query structure after building your data model..

• Mynda Treacy shows how to plot missing dates in a pivot chart

• Chandoo challenged us to solve an Excel problem, and find the products with the maximum change in monthly sales. There were 170 comments, with a wide variety of solutions.

• If you’re a little rusty in statistics, Mike Alexander gives a clear explanation of standard deviation, and the options for calculating it in Excel

• Instead of March Madness basketball, David Ringstrom has a battle between your favourite Excel features and functions. It’s down to the Sweet 16 now, so which ones will you vote for?

Excel Resources

Here are some upcoming events, courses and new books, related to Excel.

• Registration is open for the Amsterdam Excel Summit. The one-day event runs on May 14, 2014, and features sessions by several Excel MVPs, such as Bill Jelen (Mr. Excel), Ken Puls and Charles Williams. All the sessions are in English, and the limit is 100 participants, so sign up now, if you’re interested.

What Did You Read or Write?

If you read or wrote any other interesting Excel articles recently, that you’d like to share, please add a comment below, or send me an email.
Please include a brief description, and a link to the article.
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Screenshot – Excel for iPad