Excel University Blog
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Posts
This is the first post in the Treasure Maps series, where we’ll be discussing the treasure (efficiency) that can be achieved by using mapping tables. Let’s review the big picture before jumping into the mechanics. Let’s say we export some data from a system, and it looks something like this (we’ll call this Point A):…
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In this video, which is part of Microsoft’s Modern Excel webcast series, we’ll cover the basic syntax of FILTER and then see how it compares to VLOOKUP, INDEX/MATCH, XLOOKUP, and SUMIFS. The question is: can FILTER accomplish the tasks we typically associate with these powerful Excel functions? Note: not all versions of Excel contain the…
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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…
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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…
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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: Multiple return columns Multiple lookup columns Multiple matching row values…
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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…
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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…
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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,…
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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…
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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…
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