Excel tips and tutorials
August seems to be a very popular birthday month among my Excel friends. I won’t mention any names here, because most of them are quite elderly, and the shock might upset them. 😉 Anyway, to all of them, and you, if you’re celebrating this month — happy birthday!
Continue reading “Highlight Current Month Birthdays in Excel”
It’s Shark Week on the Discovery Channel, so here are a couple of handy Excel functions you can use in case of a shark attack. Of course, if you stay home and watch television, you should be safe. The infamous land shark rarely attacks.
Continue reading “Excel LARGE and FLOOR Functions for Shark Week”
Someone emailed me last week about problems with a range named Database. For reasons known only to the hamsters that operate my brain wheels, that reminded me of Excel’s Data Form.
It’s a built-in data entry tool, that lists all the fields in a table, with entry boxes for some fields, and the formula results showing. You can scroll through the records, or find specific records, based on criteria.
Continue reading “Built-In Excel Data Form Tips and Quirks”
Good news, if you’re spelling challenged — or too lazy to type long words. You can combine cells in Excel, without CONCATENATE function. Keep reading, to learn the easy way to combine cells, and add some fancy formatting to the dates and numbers.
Continue reading “Combine Cells in Excel Without Concatenate”
Sometimes you need to count the number of items that are in a range, such as between 5 and 10. For example:
In Excel 2007 and higher, use the COUNTIF and COUNTIFS functions to calculate the answers to those questions.
In earlier versions, COUNTIFS is not available, and you can use COUNTIF.
Continue reading “Count Numbers Between X and Y – Excel COUNTIF COUNTIFS”
In Excel 2003, you could create a custom toolbar, and attach it to a specific workbook. I didn’t use that feature, but occasionally I receive a workbook where someone has attached a toolbar.
Keep reading, to see how you can delete a custom toolbar from the Excel Ribbon, if you don’t want to see it.
Mike Alexander, Microsoft Excel MVP, and madcap owner of DataPig Technologies, is interviewing Excel people this summer, and posting the interviews on his Bacon Bits blog. Lots of fun!
Here’s the only picture that I have of Mike, and apparently John Walkenbach has a photo of me.
It’s funny, that picture reminds me of something, but I can’t quite remember what it is.
Mike sent each of us a list of thought-provoking questions, then published our answers, along with his astute comments and career-enhancing photos.
This week it was my turn, and you can read the results here: DataPig’s Interview with Debra Dalgleish
The first picture in Mike’s article was from a Microsoft conference that I attended in 2008.
As you can see below, I’ve already given the poor guy beside me a headache.
I’m surprised that my lightning-fast throat chop was captured on film. Or, it might not have been a throat chop. I might have been telling someone how much frosty beverage to put in my glass.
One of Mike’s interview questions was “Who plays your role in a movie about Excel?” You’ll have to read Mike’s article to see my answer.
And what about you? When they make “Excel: The Movie”, who will play your role?
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It’s summer time and blog readership will be down. So I’m saving my good Excel and Access tricks for later. Right now, I m continuing a series called ‘Road of the Excel Bastards’.
This is my take on a series called Road of the Excel Masters started a long time ago by Excel MVP, Colo. In his series, he would interview Excel gurus, asking them Excel related questions.
In my version, I’m asking questions that have nothing to do with Excel. Let’s get to know our Excel gurus through the prism of 10 stupid questions.
Today’s Excel Bastard is Debra Dalgleish!
Here is Debra about to throat chop an unsuspecting victim.
Debra is the Canadian purveyor of one of the most outstanding Excel sites out there, Contextures.com, and a published author of several Excel books. What can I say about Debra? On the surface, she looks like a very serious person, but she is really just a kid at heart, up for anything fun and interesting. I bet I could talk her into ringing on doorbells then running away.
Here is my ground-breaking interview with Debra Dalgleish, Excel Guru.
DataPig: What’s your favorite thing in your refrigerator right now?
Debra: Beef tenderloin and champagne. Oh, never mind, they’re gone now.
It’s late – so Debra just whipped up a quick tenderloin and champagne meal…nothing fancy.
DataPig: Red Shirt or Blue?
Debra: No preference – please send either colour.
DataPig: How many hats do you have?
Debra: Author, blogger, consultant, mom, annoying friend….too many hats to count.
Good news – there IS a hat made specifically for annoying book-writing moms who own their own consulting business.
Here it is.
DataPig: Who plays your role in a movie about Excel?
Debra: Chuck Norris
Yeah…that makes sense.
DataPig: Which Superpower do you want: Invisibility, Flight, Strength, or Mind Reading?
Debra: Afraid of heights, no point in lifting things, can already read minds, so that leaves invisibility. Could be fun.
DataPig: What’s the title of your autobiography?
Debra: Of Mice and Men
DataPig: Who do you like better, Tom or Jerry?
Debra: Ben.
DataPig: What’s the most important part of the sandwich?
Debra: The right amount of salt
DataPig: What’s the Best thing you ever ate?
Debra: A tossed salad. I know – I’m surprised too.
DataPig: What’s the Worst thing you ever ate?
Debra: Crow.
If you’re doing Excel training, or writing blog posts, or creating sample files, you might need to find some public sample data to use in Excel files. Here are a few sources to check.
Automatic or manual makes me think of cars, and choosing a transmission type, but an Excel workbook can also be on Automatic or Manual calculation.
And just like a car, it’s safest if you know what type of Excel calculation mode you’re driving, before you head for the information highway.
A while ago, I suggested that we pick a day to celebrate as Spreadsheet Day. There was a poll to pick a date, and October 17th, the release date of VisiCalc, got the most votes.
So, we still have lots of time to plan events for this year’s Spreadsheet Day. Do you have any ideas?
In the meantime, we know that every day is spreadsheet day, and we can celebrate that. I’ve been looking for examples of unusual ways that people use spreadsheets, and posting them on the Spreadsheet Day blog.
Why sunflowers? Why not? They’re lined up nicely, like a spreadsheet grid, and they look like they’re celebrating.
So far, the spreadsheet examples have been intriguing, such as:
and much more to come.
What’s the strangest thing you’ve used Excel for? If you have examples you’d like to share, please let me know, in the comments below, or by email: ddalgleish AT contextures.com.
I look forward to seeing what creative things you’re doing.
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