In this month’s Excel roundup, you’ll find links to a few of the interesting articles that I’ve read recently, and links to new or updated Excel resources. Shortcuts, favourite functions, a sing-along, and many more tips.
Excel Functions
- Functions – Jon Wittwer, from the Vertex42 site, asked several Excel experts for a list of their favourite functions. There are a few top choices, and a wide range of other functions mentioned. Are your favourites in the lists? Just for fun, I made a workbook with a list of all the votes, and a pivot table summary.
- Formulas — Don’t follow the examples at the top, in “16 Simple Formulas Every Architect Needs to Know”, where he types the numbers into the formula, instead of linking to the cells above. However, it was fun to see FLOOR and CEILING listed — they sound perfect for architects! You can read more about them on my site.
- Milliseconds – Doug Jenkins shows a couple of ways to work with milliseconds in Excel.
Excel Tips
- Shortcuts – Here are 8 handy Excel shortcuts from Tim Berty, on the Tweak Your Biz blog. I never remember #4, even though you can see that shortcut if you point to the Filter command on the Excel Ribbon. (Level – All)
- Sorting – Sorting a list of names in Excel seems simple enough, but Kevin Lehrbass looks at different ways to approach the problem, and how to choose the best option. His key questions could be asked before doing almost anything in Excel.
- Skills – This Forbes article is called Excel Skills for Economics Majors, but it has great tips for anyone who uses Excel. In another article, Eric Andrews describes what it means to master Excel — do you agree with his list?
Beyond the Basics
- Power BI – There were changes to Power BI licenses last week, and Matt Allington looks at the good, the bad, and the why. Jeff Weir gave his opinion too, on the Daily Dose of Excel blog.
- Experiments – One of the managers from Microsoft’s Excel team had fun using Excel to send instructions to a Micro:Bit (small micro controller for education). Take a look, to see where you can go with Excel in the future.
Resources and Tools
- Table Talk – The Excel team at Microsoft has started a new “Table Talk” series, and you can see the first episode on YouTube. Host Olaf Hubel and guest Jonnie Thomas discuss what’s new in Excel, and they showed the Excel community site, where you can find tons of great Excel resources.
Excel Fun
- Excel Song — If you want to entertain (or annoy) your co-workers, blast the latest Excel song from professor Clint Tuttle. He does this at the end of each school year, and you can hear more on his YouTuble playlist. My favourite is “Excel Funcs”
- Word Search – Dan Harrison shares his Word Search creator. You type words into the grid, and Excel fills in the blank spaces with random letters. You could add conditional formatting, with an on/off cell, to highlight the words in the grid.
- Excel Tweets — After all that heavy reading, take a break and read the weekly collection of Excel tweets, to see what people are saying about our favourite spreadsheet.
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