Excel Roundup 20160118

In this week’s roundup, generate random numbers, work with big data, build floating forms, get fancy with chart labels, and more.

Excel Roundup http://blog.contextures.com/

1. Floating Form

Instead of putting macro buttons on the worksheet, or adding commands to the Ribbon, you can create a floating form for macro buttons. Set the form to appear automatically when the workbook opens, and move it anywhere on the screen, for easy access to the buttons.

2. PowerBall in Excel

There has been lots of media coverage about the PowerBall lottery in the past couple of weeks. Of course, the odds of winning are very low, and Chris Newman created a PowerBall simulator that lets you gamble, without losing any money. Download the file, and see how you do!

3. Chart Labels

Ann K. Emery shows how to place chart labels directly on a line graph. Instead of doing this for all the data points, you could select one or two key points, and format those, using this technique.

4. Excel and Big Data

Can Excel be used to analyze “Big Data”? Chris Dutton says “Yes”, even though he is aware of its limitation, and he explains why. But let’s not call it the “Big Boy” table, okay?

5. Power Pivot

The FrankensTeam ran into a problem with blank rows, while working on a Power Pivot report. See how they fixed it, and download the sample file, to follow along with the instructions.

6. Random Numbers

If you need some data for testing, Matthew Kuo shows some simple steps to create a normally distributed set of random numbers in Excel. And to make things even easier, you can down his template, where everything is already set up for you.

7. Excel Humour

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.

Suggesting “Pivot Tables” for every problem is annoying. http://exceltheatre.com/blog/

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