Excel University Blog
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Excel
When evaluating loans or investments, we’re often presented with a nominal interest rate commonly known as the APR (Annual Percentage Rate). But what we really care about is how much we’ll actually earn or pay over time, and that’s where the effective annual rate (APY) comes in. Fortunately, Excel offers the EFFECT function to convert…
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When it comes to understanding the full cost of a loan, knowing just the monthly payment isn’t enough as the interest paid over time can be significant. That’s where Excel’s powerful CUMIPMT function comes into play. In this post, we’ll walk step-by-step through how to calculate cumulative interest over a given loan period and explore…
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Understanding the principal portion of your loan payments over time is a key step in financial modeling and reporting. Fortunately, Excel makes this process easy with the CUMPRINC function. In this blog post, we’ll take a detailed look at how the CUMPRINC function works, build a cumulative principal schedule, and ultimately construct a simple dynamic…
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If you’re managing loans or curious about how much interest you’re paying each month, Excel’s IPMT function is here to help. In this post, we’ll not only explore how the function works, but we’ll also take it further by building a fully dynamic loan amortization schedule—one that updates automatically when you change any loan inputs.…
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Managing loans and tracking monthly payments just got a whole lot easier. In this tutorial, we’ll explore the PPMT function in Excel—a lesser-known but incredibly powerful function that calculates the principal portion of a loan payment for a specific period. Even better, we’ll show how to transform this function into a fully dynamic loan amortization…
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Imagine typing just a few letters into an Excel cell and having a filtered list instantly appear—only showing the rows that match your search criteria. No scrolling, no manual filters, and best of all—no VBA. In this tutorial, we’ll walk through how to build a Live Search Box using formulas that dynamically filter a data…
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How to Use AI to Get Help With Formulas, VBA, and More As Excel users, we often find ourselves facing complex formulas we don’t understand, legacy VBA code we didn’t write, or questions like “how do I even do this?” Microsoft Copilot is a great option … but what if you don’t have a full…
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Imagine having a financial crystal ball—something that gives us a glimpse into how our money could grow into the future. That’s exactly what Excel’s FV (Future Value) function offers. Whether we’re saving for retirement, planning an investment, or just trying to hit a savings goal, FV gives us the power to explore different scenarios and…
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When it comes to automation, Excel users can certainly streamline tasks within the grid. But sometimes, we need to automate tasks outside of Excel—especially when it comes to integrating external tools and triggering actions automatically. That’s where Zapier comes in. In this post, we’ll take a beginner-friendly dive into Zapier’s AI automation capabilities by creating…
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Understanding the concept of present value can be one element in our financial decision making process. From evaluating loans and subscriptions to complex financial instruments like reverse mortgages, Excel’s PV function provides an accessible, effective tool for comparing future payments in today’s dollars. In this post, we’ll explore how to use the Excel PV function…
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