Excel Roundup 20140414

Mike Alexander is having a contest on his Bacon Bits blog – create an Excel meme, and you have a chance to win a couple of Mike’s books. The deadline is April 16th, and the rules are on Mike’s blog.

If you aren’t sure what a meme is, Wikipedia describes it as an idea or picture that is shared on the internet. Mike posted a couple of examples on his blog, and here is my contribution. I’m sure you’ve met someone like this guy!

I made this in Excel, using the Insert Online Pictures command, and the text in WordArt. What can you come up with?

excelmeme01_calc

Contextures Posts

Here’s what I posted last week:

  • 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:

  • Chandoo reviewed the Excel for the iPad app, and you can watch his video to see his comments. If you don’t have an iPad, follow the link to the data visualization contest, and you could win one!
  • There’s was lots of hype about this Excel replacement last week. One of the creators did quantum entanglement research, but thinks Excel is too complicated, and has too many functions.
  • Ron de Bruin discovered that Excel 2013 will crash if you put the Paste and Transpose icon in the Quick Access Toolbar, then copy and use that button to paste into a new document.
  • Jeff Rollins outlines the steps that a small company can take to move to a BI system in Microsoft Office, instead of using multi-colored Excel spreadsheets.
  • On Microsoft’s MVP blog, Glenna Shaw shows how to insert an Excel Table in a PowerPoint presentation, and use its advanced features there – even sparklines (a little choppy-looking) and conditional formatting.

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.
  • The European Spreadsheet Risks Interest Group – EuSpRIG –has announced the preliminary program for Eursprig 2014. This event will be held in Delft (Netherlands) on July 3, 2104.

Microsoft Excel 2013 Step By Step, by Curtis Frye.
512 pages, published April 10, 2014
Experience learning made easy—and quickly teach yourself how to manage, analyze, and present data with Excel 2013. With Step by Step, you set the pace—building and practicing the skills you need, just when you them! Includes downloadable practice files and companion eBook.

Excel Dashboards and Reports for Dummies, by Mike Alexander.
336 pages, published March 31, 2014
Learn to: Analyze data and report it in a way that makes sense; slice and dice data from different perspectives; create eye-catching and understandable reports, visualizations, and dashboards; automate redundant reporting

Dashboarding and Reporting with Power Pivot and Excel, by Kasper de Jonge.
195 pages, published April 1, 2014
This book, written by a member of Microsoft’s Power Pivot team, provides a practical step by step guide on creating a financial dashboard. The book covers in detail how to combine and shape the relevant data, build the dashboard in Excel, providing layout and design tips and tricks, prepare the model to work with fiscal dates, and show values used in many financial reports.

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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0 thoughts on “Excel Roundup 20140414”

  1. I can’t get excited about an Excel replacement when the selling point is “Excel has too many features”. I mean, I can’t get excited about an Excel replacement anyway, but I can’t take someone seriously who thinks that!

    1. @Bryan, I agree! Yes, Excel has lots of features that I rarely use, but I just ignore them till I need them.
      And now you can create your own tab on Ribbon, with just the commands that you use, and ignore the rest.

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