Publications
Author and award winning instructor Jeff Lenning CPA has written several books and 40+ articles featured in various publications. We've compiled them all in a single place for easy reference.
Have you ever encountered any of these common Excel situations where you need to: Understand a complex formula or write a formula? Understand a VBA macro that was written by an Excel power user who is no longer available? Write a VBA macro? Get general Excel help? When you encounter these types of situations, what…
Read More
When you have two different lists that you need to compare, how do you do it? For example, you want to identify which items on one list (e.g., a check register) appear on the other (e.g. bank activity)? I used to print both lists, grab a ruler and go down row by row ticking items…
Read More
Microsoft recently introduced 14 new functions for Excel—they are sure to help you save some time. We’ll start with a short description of each and then jump into some demonstrations. TEXTSPLIT: splits text into columns and/or rows based on one or more delimiters. TEXTBEFORE: returns the text before the specified delimiter. TEXTAFTER: returns the text…
Read More
Often, our Excel formulas are simple and short. As such, they are easy to read, understand and maintain over time. An example of such a formula is: =SUM(A1) But, as the complexity of our workbooks increases, so can the complexity of our formulas. Sometimes, we end up with unwieldy formulas that are long and difficult…
Read More
Excel has a lot of useful functions: FILTER, SUMIFS, VLOOKUP, XLOOKUP, SUM, SUBTOTAL and more. All in, Excel has about 500 functions, so it’s likely there’s one that returns the result you need. But now and again you may find yourself where there isn’t a built-in function that returns the value you are trying to…
Read More
Question: What is the best Excel function? Typical responses are VLOOKUP, INDEX, MATCH, XLOOKUP and SUMIFS, which are among Excel’s highlights. Follow-up question: If there was a function that could do the work of these, would it be the Greatest of All Time (GOAT)? Well, the FILTER function is too new to declare it the…
Read More
Each new version of Excel includes a variety of minor updates that are nice, but not earth shattering. They can be helpful, but don’t necessarily have a big impact on our workbooks. Indeed, if you ignore them, you can continue using Excel just like before and you’ll probably be just fine. However, we occasionally receive…
Read More
Microsoft Excel is always moving forward, which means you need to, as well. In this article, I’ll discuss an Excel technique that can be used to make budgeting faster and easier — a prize for anyone willing to learn it. The overall idea is to create several budget methods and allow the user to pick…
Read More
VLOOKUP is perhaps the most iconic function in Excel and users have come to adore it. When you search for a list of top Excel functions, VLOOKUP is there. And has been … for decades. As great as VLOOKUP is, it has limitations. For example, column order matters. It was designed to look for a…
Read More
Excel is big … really big. It has hundreds of functions and features, but which of these have the most potential to save time and help us work faster? The answer depends on what you’re working on. For common accounting and finance tasks, I believe the following 10 Excel skills can help improve the efficiency…
Read More
