Excel University Blog
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MATCH
If you’ve used the VLOOKUP function before, you know that the lookup column is expected to be in the leftmost column within the range. Meaning, it’s going to look for a value in the leftmost column within the range and once it finds its match, it will shoot to the right to return the related…
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In this article, we’ll show how to easily create and update Excel reports from QuickBooks. But, let’s back up a second. When QuickBooks has the report you want, awesome! But, when it doesn’t, we often turn to Excel. This can happen when QuickBooks doesn’t have all of the data you need for the report, for…
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Looking to make work easier? Instead of trying to do it all, focus on learning these nine useful advanced Excel functions.
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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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I recently wrote an article for the Minnesota Society of CPAs about a technique that helps you create budgets faster. Even if you don’t prepare budgets, the underlying features and functions used can be applied elsewhere. In summary, we use a data validation drop-down to provide several Budget Methods. Once you select a budget method…
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Psychologist Abraham Maslow wrote a line that is often referred to as Maslow’s Hammer. It goes something like this: “I suppose it is tempting, if the only tool you have is a hammer, to treat everything as if it were a nail.” I’ve heard the simplified version more often: “If all you have is a…
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This is the 4th post in the VLOOKUP Hacks series. The first three posts have explored the 4th argument. Now, we are going to explore a hack for the 3rd argument. In this post, we’ll hack the 3rd argument so that it references column labels instead of the column position. Check it. Note: depending on…
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There are numerous lookup functions in Excel, and often, their capabilities overlap. And, that is true with many things in Excel…there are often multiple ways to accomplish any given task. Performing lookups is no exception. So, how are we supposed to know which lookup function to use? Often, Excel users try to decide between VLOOKUP…
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I recently received a question about how to find the most recent transaction date of a list of items. There are a few fun ways to accomplish this, and so I thought I’d walk through three options. Thanks Darrell for your question! Objective The exact question from Darrell is: “I have a data table of…
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In this post, we’ll perform a two-dimensional lookup with Excel’s VLOOKUP function. Objective Let’s begin by clarifying our objective and what is meant by the term two-dimensional lookup. We have stored our price list in a table, and the price for each item varies based on the region. This is illustrated in the screenshot below. To…
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