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.
Conditional Formatting
Sometimes, we need the flexibility of a PivotTable without actually building one. Whether we’re automating dashboards, preparing recurring reports, or just streamlining our workbooks, Excel’s PIVOTBY function gives us a powerful, formula-based solution. In this post, we’ll explore how to transform raw data into dynamic summary reports using a single formula — no PivotTable required.…
Microsoft Excel continues to evolve, and one of the most impressive additions to the Excel formula family is the GROUPBY function. With it, we now have the power to create fully dynamic and flexible summary reports—all with a single formula. If you’ve relied on pivot tables or manual formulas for reporting, you’re going to love…
Hello, Excel enthusiasts! Today, we’re diving into a neat trick: automatically formatting input cells based on whether they meet specific criteria. The goal? Identify and format cells where the first digit of the input is a “4.” But, you can apply this same technique to other criteria. By the end of this post, you’ll have a clear…
Hi there! Today, we’re diving into the following Excel question: How do I highlight incorrect answers in a worksheet? It’s a great topic because conditional formatting is such a powerful tool for visualizing data in real time. Whether you’re creating a quiz, a workbook for training, or just need to check values against an answer…
I recently received a question: “I have two columns of numbers and want one cell at the top to tell me if any values in column A exist in column B.” In this blog post, we’ll walk through how to accomplish this using some essential Excel functions. Video Objective The question asked how to write…
In this post, we’ll learn how to format a range to automatically highlight any items found in a list. In other words, we will learn how to highlight transactions that have a status value that matches any of the status values in a specific list, such as Pending or Processing. This illustration uses status values,…
Hello and welcome to this tutorial on how to use conditional formatting with a calculated value in Excel! Today, we’re going to dive into the following question: How do you conditionally format a cell when the condition is based on a calculated value? Let’s jump right in! Video Tutorial Let’s work through the concepts sequentially…
Today, we’re tackling the following question: How do you create a calendar that can show multiple events per day in Excel? We’re going to transform a simple table of events into a dynamic, graphical calendar. Let’s dive right in! Objective In summary, we have a list of events stored in a Table named Table1, like…
I recently received a question: “Can I format a cell based on another cell value, and have the formatting update automatically whenever the cell value changes?” Then answer is “yes” and this blog post demonstrates the steps. To illustrate the steps, we’ll dynamically highlight the top three scores in a list … and as the…
In today’s Excel University blog post, we’re going to explore the incredible combination of the Conditional Formatting and Data Validation features in Excel. I was recently asked the following question: How do I highlight matching customers on one worksheet based on the customer selected in a data validation drop-down list on another? And I’ll answer…