Have you used Power Pivot yet? If you’d like a quick intro, and a few tips, watch this 15 minute video from Microsoft. Owen Duncan, Senior Content Developer for Power Pivot, takes you through some basics in this video, and talks about best practices.
If you’d like to learn more, their blog article has links to other Power Pivot articles on the Microsoft site.
VIDEO NO LONGER AVAILABLE
Contextures Posts
Here’s what I posted last week:
- Instead of using the default icon sets in Excel, you can create colored Harvey Balls, or other icons, with conditional formatting and custom number formats.
- Did you know that you can accidentally create calculated items in a pivot table? Learn how it happens, and how to remove them.
- If a list has blank cells, it doesn’t work well as a source for a drop down list. Use formulas to create drop down list with no blanks cells.
- Finally, for a humorous peek at what other people are saying about Excel, read this week’s collection of Excel tweets, on my Excel Theatre blog.
Other Excel Articles
Here are a few of the Excel articles that I read last week, that you might find useful:
- You’ve seen Excel’s #DIV/0! error a few times, and Mike Alexander explains why it’s mathematically impossible to divide by zero.
- If you like trains, as much as you like Excel, the National Railway Museum (UK) is looking for volunteers to enter historical data into spreadsheets.
- Scott Lyerly lists his favourite books and websites for getting started with Excel programming. What would you add to the list? And if Dick Kusleika is “Sam Malone”, who are the other characters at the Daily Dose of Excel?
- Have you ever built a convoluted workbook, with formulas that make even your head hurt? John Rougeux shares his 3 Excel pro tips for helping others not hate you.
- Jeff Weir explains Robert Mensa’s technique for creating robust dynamic drop downs, without VBA. Just remember, the best we can do is build things that are idiot resistant, not idiot proof.
- PowerPoint MVP Geetesh Bajaj shares his recommendations for using Excel and PowerPoint together.
- Power Map for Excel is now out of Preview, and generally available, if you’re an Office 365 ProPlus customer. Meagan Longoria, from Data Savvy, takes a look at the new features and bug fixes.
Excel Resources
Here are some upcoming events, courses and new books, related to Excel.
- Registration is open for the Amsterdam Excel Summit. The one-day event runs on May 14, 2014, and features sessions by several Excel MVPs, such as Bill Jelen (Mr. Excel), Ken Puls and Charles Williams. All the sessions are in English, and the limit is 100 participants, so sign up now, if you’re interested.
Excel 2013 for Scientists by Dr. Gerard Verschuuren
This 250 page book is published by Holy Macro! Books, and here’s the intro from Amazon:
”With examples from the world of science, this reference teaches scientists how to create graphs, analyze statistics and regressions, and plot and organize scientific data. Scientists can learn the tips and techniques of Excel—and tailor them specifically to their experiments, designs, and research. They will learn when to use NORMDIST vs NORMSDist and CONFIDENCE vs Z, how to keep data-validation lists on a hidden worksheet, use pivot tables to chart frequency distribution, generate random samples with various characteristics, and much more.”
What Did You Read?
If you read any other interesting Excel articles last week, that you’d like to share, please add a comment below.
Please include a brief description, and a link to the article.
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