For many decades, Excel has shipped with an add-in called the Analysis ToolPak. But, by default it is disabled. When you enable it, you get access to a bunch of cool stuff … including the ability to have Excel make sample selections. I recently received a question from Jo (thanks Jo!) asking about how to […]
VLOOKUP is perhaps the most iconic function in Excel and users have come to adore it. As great as VLOOKUP is, it has several limitations. For example, column order matters. It was designed to look for a matching value in the first (left-most) column within the lookup range. Once found, it scans to the right […]
This is the fourth and final post in the Gamification + Excel Training series where we are talking about how gamification can help make learning Excel fun (more like a game). In this post, we’ll talk about billing discounts and highlight the many other elements used in our training pass. Our Campus Pass subscription uses […]
This is the third post in the Gamification + Excel Training series, and in this post we talk about challenges. One component of our gamification strategy is to encourage competition by hosting challenges. In general, competition is motivating and can help people push themselves to accomplish more. So, it is an element used in our […]
In the second post in our Gamificaiton + Excel Training series, we’ll talk about another fun element used in our training pass: Breakout Puzzles. My family enjoys going to Escape Rooms, and if you haven’t been to one, I’d recommend checking it out. In summary, you go to the Escape Room and they lock you […]
This is the first post in a new Gamification + Excel Training series, where we’ll talk about how gamification is used to motivate students to learn Excel. What is gamification? In summary, it is the use of game design and mechanics to help people achieve their objectives. It is applied in many areas today, from […]
In this post, we’ll discuss one approach for retrieving the first occurrence (or min date) after a specified date. Let me back up. Michael asked for a way to find the first occurrence of an office visit (a date) after the date of being discharged from the hospital (and within 30 days). As this is […]
My Excel-friend John Michaloudis has compiled a podcast with tips from 18 Excel experts and MVPs. He does this annually, and this year he has put together a great collection of tips. This year, you’ll hear tips from: John Michaloudis Jeff Lenning Bill Jelen Mynda Treacy Chandoo Kasper Langmann Alan Murray Jon Acampora Danielle Stein […]
This post will demonstrate how to insert the same few items into a list and create a new row for each item (or each combination, if multiple items). For example, let’s say we have a list of some sort … we’ll use a list of T-Shirts for this illustration. We have a few T-Shirt options […]
Flash Fill is a marvelous feature that is designed to fill values down based on an example in an adjacent column. That is, you have a column of values and then you enter an example of a derived value in an adjacent column. Flash Fill attempts to recognize the pattern from your example and then […]