To work fast in Excel, you need two things: process and skills. Having one without the other means you may not be maximizing efficiency. By process, I mean the overall framework, strategy, or approach you use to optimize your workbooks. By skills, I mean Excel skills like XLOOKUP, SUMIFS, PivotTables, and Power Query. Both process […]
When I started this blog 7 years ago, my plan was to write about Excel ONLY. No other topics. Ever. But in all honesty, I’m a little preoccupied with COVID-19. So, I want to take one post to share how I’m coping with it and ask how you are coping with it. I hope that […]
XLOOKUP is the next-gen lookup function designed to address the limitations of VLOOKUP and related workarounds. It combines the capabilities of numerous functions including VLOOKUP, INDEX, MATCH, HLOOKUP, and IFERROR. Many have asked me to teach this via webinar. So, I created this short webinar that covers the basics 🙂 This on-demand webinar is about […]
Let’s say you measure something with a duration that can span multiple days. For example, a hotel guest can check in for multiple days, a patient can be in a hospital for multiple days, a widget can be in a specific manufacturing stage for multiple days, a book can be checked out for multiple days, […]
In this post, I’ll share a short snippet of VBA code that creates new worksheets based on the names stored in cell values. This can be helpful when you have a list of departments, and want to create one worksheet for each department. Or a list of accounts, or employees, or regions, and so on. […]
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 […]