Excel Twitters, Takeaways and Trials

It’s been quite a while since the last one, but I’ve finally posted another list of Excel Twitters.

The Twitter spam was making it too tough to collect the interesting tweets, and that’s why I stopped. However, I managed to create a few search settings that helped a bit, and this new list is the result.

The new Excel Twitters list is on my Excel Theatre blog, where I have all the archived Excel Twitters posts, plus some Excel video tutorials, and a few other things.

Excel Takeaways

My friend, Heather Mak, has started a new blog – Five Takeaways. In the blog, Heather and friends will “interview subject matter experts and ask them to provide the five takeaways (hence the name) of a subject area.”

  • UPDATE: The blog is no longer online

She asked if I’d like to create a list of five takeaways for Excel, so I’m working on it. If you’d like to help, please add a comment with one or more things that you’d include as an Excel takeaway. Thanks!

Excel Trials

I’ve been testing some Excel products recently and here’s one that I tried this weekend.

  • [update] This add-in is no longer available

Mathias Brandewinder of Clear Lines Consulting sent me a link to Akin, an Excel file comparison program.

This is a free download, and was very simple to install. Open the Akin program, and select two Excel files to load.

  • Akin compares the files, and highlights the cells on the selected sheets, where there are differences.
  • You can click on a row or column heading, or the Select All button, to see only the cells where there are differences.

Find Differences in Large Worksheets

That feature is useful in a large worksheet, letting you focus on the differences, without searching through the sheets manually.

The program is easy to use, and a good tool to use if you’re trying to find changes that someone else has made in a file. It shows changes to both values and formulas.

Here’s a screen shot of the Akin window, with the original and modified value in cell B1 shown.

screen shot of the Akin window
screen shot of the Akin window

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0 thoughts on “Excel Twitters, Takeaways and Trials”

  1. Debra – I just happened to be on that site over this past week, but can’t remember how I wound up there. I like the site. My top five: 1) Ability to have Excel quickly and easily calculate results using a vast array of formulas and functions, from the simple – for ex, sum a set of numbers – to the complex – ie, mortgage payment amount, standard deviation. 2) Ability to analyze information quickly (filters) 3) Ability to summarize and prepare reports for small to vast amounts of information quickly and flexibly (pivottables) 4) Ability to quickly prepare many different types of charts based on small or large amounts of information. 5) Ability to setup Excel to peform predefined routine tasks (macros).
    I look forward to what you and others think.

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