Excel Roundup 20160201

In this week’s roundup, try the formula challenge, get tips to make better charts, see video steps for fixing numbers, and much more.

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

1. Fix Excel Numbers That Don’t Add Up

If you’ve imported data from the web, and things don’t look right, see how to fix Excel numbers that don’t add up

This technique uses the Paste Special – Add feature, and I made this short video to show the steps for fixing the problem.

2. Dinosaurs

You’re probably familiar with Shark Week, but last was Excel Dinosaur Week. While Chandoo was busy assembling dinosaurs from a set of parts, Jon Peltier was calculating how long it would take for a dinosaur to catch a human.

I built this chart from Jon’s instructions, and added his VBA code to animate it. For extra excitement, I added a text box with a caption that changes (it’s linked to a cell) when the dinosaur gets the human. Run, human, run! (I’m easily entertained.)

And if you love charts, take a look at Jon’s time-saving Charting Utilities.

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

3. Better Charts

You might not need a dinosaur chase in every chart. Ann K. Emery explains how to simplify your charts, and emphasize the key information, by using text and colour.

There’s another good chart makeover on the Storytelling With Data blog, where Cole Nussbaumer Knaflic transforms a pie chart into a clear report. There is an Excel file that you can download.

4. Scrabble Challenge

If you enjoy a game of Scrabble, almost as much as you love working in Excel, try the shortest formula challenge on the ExcelXOR blog. Download the sample file, and use a formula to find the word that gives you the highest score. That should get your brain going for the start of this week/month!

5. 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.

Try to stay one step ahead of your co-workers, so you too can be the office Excel guru.

This week's best Excel tweets http://exceltheatre.com/blog/

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

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