Excel tips and tutorials
Are you building custom tabs for your workbooks yet? Last year, I wrote a couple of articles about custom tabs:
Continue reading “Add Your Own Icon to an Excel Custom Ribbon Tab”
I’ve seen lots of non-spreadsheet items with “Excel” in their names, such as gum, and bowling gloves, and hand dryers.
However, this is the first time that I’ve seen a product named after a pivot table. Do you think that they help you analyze your data more efficiently? I wonder if they have a women’s version too.
Kenneth Cole REACTION Men’s Pivot Table LE Oxford
(photo no longer available)
Here’s what I posted recently:
Here are a few of the Excel articles that I read recently, that you might find useful:
Here are some upcoming events, courses, recently published books, and other new items, related to Excel.
| Practical Numerical Methods for Chemical Engineers: Using Excel with VBA by Richard A. Davis“This latest 3rd edition continues to expand the breadth of practical numerical methods with over 100 VBA macros for extending Excel’s power for engineering & scientific analysis. Engineers & scientists will find the enhanced coverage of computational tools applicable to a variety of problems in their own disciplines.” | |
| Financial Modeling for Business Owners and Entrepreneurs, by Tom Y. Sawyer.”You’ll learn to create operational and financial models in Excel that describe the workings of your company in quantitative terms.” | |
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Excel VBA for Financials, 2-day course led by Excel experts, Jan Karel Pieterse and Tony de JonkerThis Dutch course is specifically aimed at the Finance professional. It has no frills, and no technical mumbo-jumbo – just the VBA you need to achieve more success in your daily job.Date: November 19 and December 3, 2014
Location: Utrecht (Netherlands) |
| Beginning Power BI with Excel 2013, by Dan Clark”Guides you step by step through the process of analyzing and visualizing your data. Daniel R. Clark, an expert in BI training and a regular speaker on these topics, takes you through each tool in turn, using hands-on activities to consolidate what you’ve learned in each chapter.” | |
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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I like to color data entry cells, so they’re easy to spot on an Excel worksheet. If you know that you should type a value in every blue cell, it’s quicker, and safer, to fill in a worksheet.
Recently, I was asked how to color a specific number of data entry cells, based on a number that someone selected from a drop down list. So, instead of manually coloring the data entry cells, I used conditional formatting to color them.
In the screen shot below, 3 was selected in cell C2, so 3 data entry cells are blue, in cells C5:C7.
If you love Jambalaya, you’ll appreciate the Excel Jambalaya Calculator that Jay Crush has worked on for several years. He just released version 7.0, and you can read about the calculator, and get the file download link, in Judy Walker’s article in the New Orleans Times-Picayune.
I downloaded the file, and you can see a screen shot below. Now, if 150 people drop by for dinner, I’ll be able to cook up a giant batch! Please call ahead, to let me know if you’ll want a full plate, or just an 8 oz bowl.
On of my favourite Excel tricks is to show a combo box, when you click a cell that has a drop down list. The combo box can have larger font, and it autocompletes, so it’s easier for people to use.
There is only one ActiveX combo box on the worksheet, and it is hidden until you click on a drop down cell. When it appears, it shows the data validation list for the selected cell.
Continue reading “Worksheet Combo Box Problem in Excel 2013”
Are you brave enough to enter the ModelOff competition, that tests your financial modeling skills in Excel?
To help you decide if you’d like to enter, there are workbooks with questions from previous years, available for download. For example, can you find and fix the errors in a complex workbook?
You can use data validation to create a drop down list on an Excel worksheet. For example, show a list of countries, if you click a cell in column B.
After you’ve set up that first list, you can make another list, in column C, to show the cities for the selected country.
If you have Excel, do you even need any other programs? In this week’s video, David Buchanan, from the Chef’s Resources website, shows how to use an Excel workbook to plan every step in an event, from the idea phase, to prep and ordering, to recipes. I like his description of this process as “mental mise en place” worksheets, to help you organize tasks.
After you record or write a macro in Excel, you can run the macro, or go slowly through it, line by line, to see if it is working correctly. I use the F8 key, in the Visual Basic Editor, if I’m troubleshooting a macro, to see where something is going wrong. You can use also use the Step Into command, in the VBE’s Debug menu.
However, for the past few months, something was going wrong with the “Step Into” command in Excel 2010, whether I used the menu, or the F8 key.
There is a free app available for Excel (2013 or Online version), that lets you create 8 different chart types, including some that aren’t standard Excel charts, such as box plots. The app is called XLMiner Data Visualization, and it’s created by Frontline Systems, which also makes the Solver add-in.
If you log in to your Microsoft account, you can download and install the app from the Microsoft Store. Then select data, and the chart appears in the app’s window. In the screen shot below, you can see the box plot chart that I created, in just a few seconds.
The free version of XLMiner lets you do the basics, and if you want more features, you can upgrade to the Pro version. It costs $995, about the same as Tableau Desktop. And if you want quick, fancy charts, at a much lower cost, take a look at Jon Peltier’s charting utility.
