Contextures Blog

Happy New Year! I hope you had time to relax over the holidays, and didn’t have to endure too much cold weather and snow.

It’s a little late for a holiday poem, but I enjoyed this one on the Code? Boom. blog. – I’m an Excelebrity, get me out of here. The poem is a variation on Night Before Christmas, and ends with:

And I heard them exclaim, as they walked out of sight—
“Excel’s not that bad” “Yeah, I think it’s alright.”

There are also some downloadable files, with Excel activities for grade school students.

Contextures Posts

I took some time off blogging, to enjoy the holidays, and just made a few posts since the last roundup:

My old mouse started acting up, so I had to get a new one. Which do you prefer, wireless mouse or wired? The wired one has the advantage of never needing batteries, but that long tail can get in the road sometimes!

For a humorous peek at what other people are saying about Excel, read the December 27th collection of Excel tweets, on my Excel Theatre blog.

And here is a link to the January 3rd edition: Excel Tweets collection. There’s usually a tweet or two that sounds like something I’d comment on! How about you?

Other Excel Articles

Here are a few of the Excel articles that I read last week, that you might find useful:

Excel Errors: Good news – the Daily Dose of Excel blog is up and running again, after some server problems. Dick Kusleika takes a look at error handling via an error class.

Sports: If you like soccer (football), you might enjoy Jough Donakowski’s article on keeping sports statistics in a spreadsheet.

Charts: The always informative and entertaining Science Goddess finds quick ways to improve the appearance of Excel charts. In another post, she tackles line charts.

Calendar: If you’re planning your activities for 2014, you can download a free Excel calendar template from Chandoo’s website. You can see a screen shot of the calendar below

Tables: For more details on Excel’s named tables, you can read the Customizable Spreadsheet Table Styles patent application that was published last week.

Power Query: Chris Webb shows how to use local groups in Power Query, with an example of grouping by time ranges.

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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What happened in the world of spreadsheets last week? Here’s the latest roundup.

Contextures Posts

Here’s what I posted last week:

To narrow down the choices for data entry worksheets, you can remove used items from a data validation drop down list. That’s a big help in some sheets, where you shouldn’t choose the same item twice.

An updated version of my data validation combo box technique, that lets you add new items on the fly.

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:

Excel Card: If you haven’t sent your Christmas cards yet, you could use this Excel greeting card, from Jordan Goldmeier.

Totals: Apparently it was sporadic totals week, and nobody told me! To see how to achieve this, you can watch videos by Chandoo, Mr. Excel and Kevin Lehrbass. Pick just one, or watch all three! There is a screen shot of sporadic totals below, if you’re not sure what they are.

REST API: Microsoft’s Excel team shows how you can get started using the Excel Services REST API in the cloud.

Excel Books: Simon Murphy wonders if he should write a book about Excel development. What do you think? Maybe he could start with a chapter or two, sold as a mini-book on his website, and see how that goes.

Excel Bug: Charles Williams has found a Status Bar Calculate bug in Excel 2013, and he hopes it’s fixed soon.

Excel Front End: Scott Lyerly is looking for your input on his Excel as a front end solution. What do you think about his idea of keeping SQL statements in a database table, and using those to update the code in an Excel file?

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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It’s almost Christmas, so here’s an Excel-themed version of Santa Baby for your entertainment, sung by Santa Monica Excel Consultant Szilvia Juhasz.

Contextures Posts

Here’s what I posted last week, on my Contextures site and blogs:

Grouping: Instead of seeing dates grouped by year and month in a filter drop down, you can change a setting to ungroup them. I understand the benefits of that automatic grouping, but I’d rather see the individual dates most times.

Pivot Settings: When you add new items to a pivot table, change a setting to make them appear in alphabetical order, and show them even if a filter is applied.

I Hear Voices: If you accidentally turn on the Voice Narrator in Excel, here’s how to turn it off, so Excel stops talking to you.

1. Tweets: 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:

Excel Tricks: Did you learn any cool Excel tricks this year? Chandoo shares his favourite new trick, and read the comments to see what other people have learned.

Books: I’ve used Excel for all kinds of things, including keeping track of chapters when writing a non-fiction book. Lisa Alber explains how she uses Excel to connect the chapters in her novel.

Pivot Tables: Doug Glancy shares his technique and VBA code for using conditional formatting on a pivot table.

Excel Reports: If you’re creating reports in Excel, Charley Kyd shows how the SUMIFS, INDEX and MATCH functions can help you pull the data for the report.

Risks: Simon Murphy asks the interesting question, “Has EuroSpRIG increased spreadsheet risk?”

Excel Charts: Jon Peltier gives step by step instructions for building a multiple width overlapping column chart. You can see the final result in the screen shot below.

What Excel News 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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In this week’s video, you can see that Gwyneth Paltrow uses Excel to plan her holiday spending, just like the rest of us. Her budget might be a bit bigger than ours though! She mentions Excel around the 1:00 mark.

Contextures Posts

Here’s what I posted last week, on my Contextures site and blogs:

Instead of using several clicks to clear pivot table or Excel table filters, add a button that clears them all with one click.

Make it easier for people to enter data in your worksheet, by showing input and error messages on data validation 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:

Excel Tricks: On the Ask a Manager blog, someone asked, “What’s the coolest Excel trick you know?” Read the comments to see the tips — and there are lots!

Power Pivot: Rob Collie shows a simple, and useful, trick for combating “stale” Slicers in PowerPivot.

Health: On his Freewheel Burning blog, Pete Larson is dismayed to learn that the fancy new heart risk calculator he heard about is just an Excel workbook. Can Excel really help save lives?

Sparklines: This sparkline tip was in a Tableau article, but could apply to your Excel sparklines too.

Excel Crashes: Ryan Kelly had a problem with Excel crashing when he used VBA on his MacBook, and explains how he fixed it.

Excel Help: Has your department stopped calling IT for help with Excel projects, because Excel gurus like you are doing the work, as Simon Murphy found?

What Did You Read?

Did you read any other Excel articles this week? Please share a link in the comments, with a brief description of the article.

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