Contextures Blog

The Tech Republic blog takes a look at 5 free Excel add-ins, that you can download from the Microsoft Store website. It looks like they only work with Excel 2013 – have you upgraded to that version yet?

One of the add-ins is People Graph, from Microsoft, and it lets you infographic-style charts, with eye-hurting colours, and a variety of shapes. Do you agree with the author’s description of this add-in?

“Rather than displaying standard bar charts, People Graph displays icons that better convey business data that’s related to people (such as the number of people who purchase a product).”

 

Contextures Posts

Here’s what I posted last week:

• Save filter and print settings in Custom Views, then show the selected view’s name on the worksheet

• Use a couple of quick tricks for better formatting in pivot table headings.

• Make simple changes to VBA code in sample files that you copy from my website, or other sites on the web.

• 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:

• Jon Peltier has finally released a Mac version of his awesome charting utilities add-in. So, if you create complex charts in Excel for the Mac, take at look.

• If you add combo boxes in a modeless UserForm, Scott Lyerly reminds you to include name of the workbook in the RowSource string.

• Chris Woodill explains that sometimes an ordinary pivot table is faster or better than a Power Pivot version.

• Cameron Lackpour figured out why his csv file wasn’t importing correctly, if there were commas within one of the items.

• If you’ve ever had to make changes to the VBA code in an Excel file that someone else built, you might appreciate the code that one new developer was told not to change, because it had worked just fine for years. Yikes!

• Steve Doig shows how to use Excel’s tools for data journalism, and shares tips for finding sample data to download.

• Instead of starting from scratch every time you build a new workbook, you can save time with modular spreadsheet development.

Excel Resources

Here are some upcoming events, courses and new books, related to Excel.

• If you use MS Access, along with Excel, you can attend the UK Access User Group National Seminar, on May 20th. It’s a one-day meeting, with 5 sessions.
• 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, 2104. Read more about it on Patrick O’Beirne’s blog.

Business Intelligence Tools for Excel Analysts, by Michael Alexander, Jared Decker, Bernard Wehbe

384 pages, published May 5, 2014

“For the first time, Excel is an integral part of the Microsoft BI stack – capable of integrating multiple data sources, defining relationships between data sources, processing analysis services cubes, and developing interactive dashboards that can be shared on the web. With these new tools, it’s becoming important for Excel analysts to expand their knowledge to include new skills, like database management, query design, data integration, multidimensional reporting, and a host of other practices.”

Excel Data Analysis for Dummies, by Stephen L. Nelson, E. C. Nelson

360 pages, published May 5, 2014

“If you’re like most people, you probably don’t take full advantage of Excel’s data analysis tools. This friendly guide walks you through the features of Excel to help you discover the insights in your rough data. From input, to analysis, to visualization, this book shows you how to use Excel to uncover what’s hidden within the numbers.”

What Did You Read or Write?

If you read or wrote any other interesting Excel articles recently, that you’d like to share, please add a comment below, or send me an email.

Please include a brief description, and a link to the article.

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