In this week’s roundup, KPI dashboards, pricing lookups, autofit for merged cell rows, and more.
1. AutoFit Merged Rows
If you merge cells, Excel won’t adjust the row height like it does for other cells. You can use a macro to fix the row height before you print, so all the text is visible.
2. KPI Dashboards
Chandoo just announced the winners of his recent KPI performance charts and dashboards contest. Take a look at all the entries, to get some inspiration for your own dashboards.
3. Microsoft Office Free Add-ins
On the Lifehacker blog, Melanie Pinola listed several free add-ins for Microsoft Office.
Microsoft used to call these things “Apps”, but now they’re “Add-ins”, and they’re different from what I call add-ins (click here for my list of free Excel add-ins). It’s all very confusing!
4. Football Field Chart
The football season is over in Canada, and I’d never heard of a Football Field Chart before, but Rasna Saini gives step by step instructions on how to build one. I’m sure that Jon Peltier could show us a better way to add that vertical line though.
5. Power Query
Using Power Query, Ken Puls explains how to separate text and numbers, even if the data is a bit messy, with commas or extra spaces. You can download Ken’s sample file, and follow along with the tutorial.
If you want to learn lots more, Ken teaches a live online Power Query course, along with Miguel Escobar, or get their new book, M is for (Data) Monkey.
6. Pricing Tier Lookup
If you sell products at different prices, based on the quantity ordered, Chandoo shows how you can find the correct price in a lookup table. He thinks the final formula is a bit too long though, and asks for suggestions on improving it.
7. Excel Humour
In a short and humorous video, Oz du Soleil demonstrates his Excel Christmas template that you can use to track when your children are being naughty or nice, and let them know if Santa or Krampus will be coming. Don’t show this to the kids – that Krampus creature is scary!
Finally, for a bit of spreadsheet humour, you can see what people are saying about Excel, in my weekly collection of tweets. Here’s one of my favourite tweets from this week’s collection.
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