This week, attend a free dashboard webinar, find data with VLOOKUP, create a funnel chart, and many more tips.
If you read or wrote any other interesting Excel articles recently, or have upcoming Excel events, please let me know. Thanks!
1. Contextures Posts
In case you missed them, here are the articles that I posted recently:
- Use Excel to track project tasks. Enter task description, estimated and actual times, date completed, and other info.
- For a humorous peek at what other people are saying about spreadsheets, read the latest collection of Excel tweets, on my Excel Theatre blog.
2. Free Excel Dashboard Webinar
This week, Mynda Treacy, from My Online Training Hub, is leading a free one-hour Excel Dashboard Webinar. There are a few days and times available, so pick the session that best fits your schedule. The webinar will be fast-paced, and packed with dashboard tips and techniques that you can apply in your own workbooks.
3. Reconcile Accounts With VLOOKUP
Instead of manually comparing two lists of customer accounts, Sharyn Baines shows how to use a VLOOKUP formula to do the comparison. She gives details on how to set up the data, enter the formula, and confirm the results.
If you’re just getting started, there are more VLOOKUP examples and videos on my website.
4. Free Data Analysis Course Online
On Microsoft’s Excel team blog, Professor Felienne Hermans announced that she is teaching a free online course — Data Analysis: Take it to the MAX(). You can enroll in the course at no charge (select the Audit option), or pay for the course, if you’d like to receive a certificate. You’ll get all the materials, even if you’re just doing the free audit.
5. Check Your Axis
Walt Crawford upgraded to Excel 2010, and noticed a problem with his new charts – the Y axis didn’t start at zero, like it used to. So, remember to check that chart, if the changes look too dramatic. Unless, of course, that is the effect you’re going for!
6. Slow VBA in Excel 2013
If you have upgraded to Excel 2013, and do any programming in that version, you might find that some things run much slower than they did in previous versions. If so, you’ll find an interesting discussion of this problem, on the Daily Dose of Excel blog.
For help getting started with VBA, see the introduction on my website
7. Function Tips
On the PC World blog, JD Sartain shared a list of 15 Excel function tips. There are 3 categories — entering formulas, formulas for common tasks, and bonus tips. She suggests using the DAYS function, which is new in Excel 2013, but you don’t need it — you can just subtract the end date from the start date.
8. New DAX Functions
Chris Webb posted a link to Microsoft’s documentation for all the new DAX functions that can be used in the Excel 2016 Preview. I’m glad to see that there is finally a UNION function, to combine all the rows of multiple tables.
_____________________
____________________