At PC World, Julie Sartain shows how to set up a workbook with a sheet for each month, and 3D formulas to summarize the Year to Data expenses. It’s not the way I’d set it up, but that’s a topic for another blog post.
What struck me was the comment,
“One of Excel’s greatest tricks is the dimensional or 3D reference…In Excel 2013, Microsoft has beefed it up with enhanced options and formulas.”
There are new functions, and other features in Excel 2013, but I don’t know of any new options in this area – did I miss something?
Contextures Posts
Here’s what I posted last week:
- Quick tips for auditing Excel formulas, and doing some troubleshooting on a worksheet.
- How to copy and use sample pivot table code in your own workbooks.
- Create IFRAME code with formulas, and copy it to your web page or blog article, to embed a YouTube video, or other content.
- Finally, for a humorous peek at what other people are saying about spreadsheets, 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:
- Paul Downs posted a follow-up to his outdated pricing spreadsheet problem, in response to the suggestions he got from readers.
- Thomas Nelshoppen shared his workbook for keeping baseball statistics.
- If you like the number game, 2048, the Excel team found a couple of Excel versions that you can download.
- Chandoo want to know what you struggle to do in Excel. There are over 100 comments, so there’s lots of struggling going on!
- Ross Goodman uses a macro to pull his calendar entries from Outlook to Excel, to show what he’s done for the past week.
- Ray Woodcock had trouble deleting a chart, and was finally able to remove it in Open Office.
- In the New York Times, Neil Irwin outlines everything you need to know about Thomas Piketty versus The Financial Times.
Excel Resources
Here are some upcoming events, courses and recently published books, related to Excel.
- The European Spreadsheet Risks Interest Group – EuSpRIG –has announced the preliminary program for Eursprig 2014. This event will be held in Delft (Netherlands) on July 3, 2014. Read more about it on Patrick O’Beirne’s blog.
Share Your Events and Articles
If you read or wrote any other interesting Excel articles recently, or have upcoming Excel events, please share a link in the comments below, with a brief description. Thanks!
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Hi Debra,
I can second you on your observation. There is of course new features in Excel 2013 including some new functions like Sheet(), but as for the 3-D capabilities specifically, I am (IMHO), not aware of any changes in 2013 as compared to older versions. Julie was probably just trying to emphasize a point.
Cheers
(and TX as always for Contextures – an amazing site with an amazing blog)
Thanks Rudi!
Thanks for linking to my website – one small correction though: the macro that I posted pulls calendar entries not tasks from Outlook to Excel.
Although on reflection – I probably SHOULD include this on my weekly report but I tend not to capture this level of granularity in Outlook.
Thanks
Ross
Thanks Ross, I changed the link text.
Hi Deb,
I posted a new article on my blog : http://dataprose.org/2014/05/undaunted-by-unpivot/ The article demonstrates how to UnPivot or Normalize data that is in a Cross-tab format.
Thanks
Winston
@Winston, thanks, I’ll add it to next week’s roundup.
Debra – To the best of my recollection, the 3D formula mentioned has been around for awhile, having been shortened from what I think used to be a CONSOLIDATE function years ago. Also, as a CPA, I share your opinion about not preparing separate sheets for monthly expenses. One sheet plus a PivotTable(s) would be my recommendation. A free student budget workbook that uses this latter approach can be downloaded from the spreadsheet day blog (spreadsheet-day.com/blog, then search for student budget workbook).
Thanks Bob! Here is a link to the student budget on your Simply Learning Excel website, to save people a few clicks:
Student Budget Workbook