Excel University Blog
Read on for in-depth articles, tutorials, and videos. Search or browse for specific topics. Be sure to subscribe if you'd like to be notified when we write something new.
Excel
Using target markers in a bar chart to compare a value (such as actual sales) to a target (such as budget or forecast) provides a clean display. As with anything in Excel, there are several ways to build such a chart. In this post, we’ll walk through a technique that does not require any calculated…
Here’s the situation. We have created a PivotTable and related PivotChart, and, since we are nice, we have also provided a Slicer so that the user can easily make selections. But, we’d like the report titles to dynamically update based on the selections made. As with anything in Excel, there are multiple ways to accomplish…
Working fast is about knowing features and functions, for sure, but, it is also about how quickly we communicate with Excel. We can set up QAT buttons to activate frequently used commands … and … hidden commands. Hidden commands? Yes … Excel has far more commands than are provided in the standard ribbon tabs. It…
Historically, when it was time for Microsoft to release the next version of Excel, everyone would be buzzing, excited, and talking about the new features, functions, and improvements. I know that my heart would pitter-patter as the new version was installing on my system. But, things are different now. In fact, in a way, the…
Let’s say we are building a query to clean up and prepare some data for use, and we have a specific value we need to use within the query. But, we would like to be able to change the value as desired, before refreshing the query. One option would be to enter and update that…
The SUBTOTAL function is one of my favorites. So, I wrote a post about it a while back that provided a macro to insert it. The macro worked kinda like the AutoSum command, but it inserted the SUBTOTAL function instead of the SUM function. Gary posted a suggestion for enhancing the macro, so, I wrote…
I am thrilled 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! A special thank you this year to Gary Zeune of The Pros and The Cons who has generously donated time helping…
In this post, we’ll talk about how to use a custom list to automatically sort a PivotTable. By default, a PT is initially displayed in alphabetical order by the row labels. But, what if that isn’t what we want? Well, we can always manually sort each time we create a PT. But, there is a…
In this post, we’ll talk about how to edit the value in a PivotTable cell. Wait…what!? I’ve been using PTs for a long time, and, I’ve always received an error when I try to edit the value in a PivotTable cell. Yes, we’ve been able to edit the label cells, but, not the value cells.…
I think it’s about time for another breakout puzzle … yes! This breakout puzzle is inspired by The Matrix. The Matrix? Yes, the movie, you know … with Neo. If you haven’t seen it, it was a popular movie about 20 years ago. (Wow does time fly.) Anyhow, I love that movie and so decided…