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.

PivotTable

Excel vs ChatGPT

By Jeff Lenning | February 25, 2025 |

When working with messy data, we often turn to Excel, but with the rise of AI tools like ChatGPT, we now have new ways to tackle these challenges. In this post, we’ll compare Excel and ChatGPT side by side, using three common data tasks: We’ll see how each tool handles the job, the pros and…

Read More

Unbelievable Dashboards (in 3 easy steps)

By Jeff Lenning | February 11, 2025 |

Creating an interactive Excel dashboard doesn’t have to be complicated. With just a few steps, we can transform raw data into a dynamic, easy-to-read report that updates automatically as new data comes in. In this guide, we’ll walk through the process of building an Excel dashboard using pivot tables, pivot charts, and a timeline filter.…

Read More

How To Automate Your Workflow

By Jeff Lenning | January 28, 2025 |

Are you ready to save hours of manual work each week? In this guide, we’ll explore how to automate your workflow in Excel using tools like Power Query, Pivot Tables, and Pivot Charts. Best of all, you don’t need to be a coding wizard to get started. By the end, you’ll know how to effortlessly…

Read More

Max Date for per Category

By Jeff Lenning | October 15, 2024 |

Hello, and welcome to our latest Excel tutorial! I was recently asked the following question: how do I see the max date for each vendor assuming each vendor has multiple dates? So, in this post, we’ll learn how to find the maximum date for each category — in this case, each vendor with multiple transactions.…

Read More

Count Occurrences between Dates

By Jeff Lenning | October 8, 2024 |

Hello, Excel enthusiasts! Welcome back! Today, we’re diving into an interesting question I received recently: “How do I count occurrences between two dates in Excel?” As with most things in Excel, there are multiple ways to accomplish this task. In this post, I’ll focus on how to achieve our goal with a PivotTable. If you’re…

Read More

Get Last Data Row from PivotTable

By Jeff Lenning | June 4, 2024 |

The post was written to answer a question I recently received: How can we retrieve the last row from a PivotTable? Buckle up as we solve this challenge by nesting two Excel functions into a single formula. Video Step-by-step Let’s visualize the essenence of the question. We have a PivotTable in our worksheet, perhaps something…

Read More

How to Launder Money with Excel (Benford’s Law)

By Jeff Lenning | April 9, 2024 |

Hello and welcome to another informative blog post from Excel University. Today, we’re diving into a somewhat unusual topic – using Excel to launder money. If you aren’t familiar with that term, it simply means taking cash received from an illegal enterprise and running it through a legitimate business. That way, the money appears as…

Read More

PIVOTBY A Dynamic PivotTable Alternative

By Jeff Lenning | January 16, 2024 |

Excel’s PIVOTBY function allows you to create dynamic summary reports that look very much like PivotTables. However, they are totally dynamic … no need to click Refresh. They are created with a single formula, but do not have the rich features and capabilities of PivotTables. Depending on your workbook, the PIVOTBY function may be a…

Read More

Dynamic Pivot-style Report with GROUPBY

By Jeff Lenning | January 9, 2024 |

In this tutorial, we will learn how to use the GROUPBY function to create dynamic pivot-style reports with a single formula. Let’s back up a sec. For years, we’ve turned to PivotTables to build summary reports. Now we have another option: the GROUPBY function. While it doesn’t create a true PivotTable, it does create a…

Read More

Pictures in Excel 5: Pictures in Data Types

By Jeff Lenning | September 19, 2023 |

How to Insert Images into Excel Cells with Data Types and Use Them in PivotTables Welcome to the final post in the Pictures in Excel series! In this tutorial, we will insert images into Excel cells using data types and then incorporate these images into PivotTables. By the end of this post, you’ll learn how…

Read More