Excel University Blog

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Posts

Perform Lookups with FILTER 3

By Jeff Lenning | October 5, 2020 |

This is the third post in this series, where we are doing lookup tasks with the FILTER function instead of VLOOKUP. In the first post, we discovered that the FILTER function supports multiple return columns. In the second post, we discovered that it also supports multiple lookup columns. In this post, we’ll discover that it…

Perform Lookups with FILTER 2

By Jeff Lenning | September 29, 2020 |

This is the second post in a series where we are talking about how FILTER can be a nice alternative to traditional lookup functions such as VLOOKUP. In the first post, we saw how the FILTER function supports multiple return columns (it can return values from multiple columns). In this post, we’ll see how the…

Perform Lookups with FILTER 1

By Jeff Lenning | September 23, 2020 |

This is the first post in a series where we’ll talk about how to use the FILTER function as an alternative to lookup functions including VLOOKUP. Why? Well, as we’ll discover in this series, the FILTER function offers several key benefits. For example, FILTER supports: In this first post, we’ll see how the FILTER function…

Create Calculated Columns without Writing Formulas

By Jeff Lenning | September 14, 2020 |

Historically, we have created calculated columns by writing formulas. In this post, we’ll see that in some cases, clicking a few buttons in Power Query can be a nice alternative. Objective Before we get into the mechanics, let’s confirm our objective. Let’s say we have a table full of transactions, like this: We would like…

Historical Stock Quotes with STOCKHISTORY

By Jeff Lenning | September 9, 2020 |

Let’s say we want to retrieve historical stock quotes for a specific security into Excel. Since this is Excel, there are of course several options. Before the STOCKHISTORY function, we could pull data from relevant web pages using Power Query (which I’ve written about before here). But, the most current versions of Excel now have…

Dynamic Arrays 3

By Jeff Lenning | August 24, 2020 |

This is the third post in the Dynamic Arrays series. In the first two posts, we discussed the spill range and the spill reference operator. If you’ve enjoyed the first two posts, I think you’ll enjoy this one even more because we get to talk about the FILTER and XLOOKUP functions. Video Overview So far,…

Dynamic Arrays 2

By Jeff Lenning | August 17, 2020 |

This is the second post in the Dynamic Arrays series. In the first post, we talked about how formulas can return multiple values, the resulting spill range, and two dynamic array functions. In this post, we’ll talk about how to refer to the spill range with other formulas. Video Spill Range The spill range includes…

Dynamic Arrays 1

By Jeff Lenning | August 11, 2020 |

During the years we have been using Excel, we have come to understand that a formula calculates a value. Meaning, a single value. Right? Like … we write a formula, hit Enter, and the result is displayed in the cell. Easy … that is how we have been using Excel for decades. Multiple Values But…

2020 Scholarship Winners

By Jeff Lenning | August 4, 2020 |

I am excited to announce this year’s Excel University scholarship winners! These scholarships are supported by the Excel University Alumni Association, so thanks to all of you who have helped make these awards possible. I’d also like to that Safe Harbor LLP for their generous contribution to the scholarship fund this year! Each will receive…

Find Last Occurrence

By Jeff Lenning | July 28, 2020 |

I was recently asked how to find the last occurrence of a value in a column. Although there are multiple ways to accomplish this, in this post, I’ll talk about how to use XLOOKUP. Objective Before we jump into Excel, let’s confirm our objective. Let’s say we have a bunch of transactions that look like…