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 […]
Sometimes in Excel, we want to use formulas to compute row values, but, the number of rows is dynamic and changes periodically. For example, let’s say we want to create an amortization schedule and use it for a variety of loans. Some loans are paid in 36 months, some in 120 months, and some in […]
Power Query is an amazing tool, and I love learning about it. In the Power Query Editor, as you click the command icons, Excel is actually writing M code behind the scenes. M code has many more functions than are available in the ribbon. So, the thing to keep in mind is that if you […]
This is the second of two related posts that demonstrate how to use Power Query to deal with rows and delimited lists. In the first post, we combined rows into a delimited list. In this post, we’ll do the opposite and convert a delimited list into rows. Well, what are we waiting for … let’s […]
This is the first of two related posts that demonstrate how to use Power Query to deal with rows and delimited lists. In this first post, we’ll combine rows into a delimited list. In the second post, we’ll do the opposite and convert a delimited list into rows. Well, what are we waiting for … […]
In this post, I answer a question from Emmanuel who asked how to compute the age when given a list of birth dates. We want the solution to be dynamic, so that it is easy to update the age calculation going forward. Since this is Excel, there are many ways to accomplish this. In this […]
You want to perform a lookup with VLOOKUP, but, there are multiple lookup columns. So, what are you supposed to do? Combine them into a single lookup column? That is certainly one option, but, as with just about anything in Excel, there are multiple ways. In a previous post, I showed one way to do […]
In this post, we’ll summarize data from multiple CSV files with a PivotTable. Specifically, we’ll use a Get & Transform query (Power Query) to retrieve and prepare data from numerous CSV files. Then, we’ll send the query results into the data model (Power Pivot). Then, we’ll build our summary report using a PivotTable based on […]
If you have ever downloaded bank activity from your bank’s website, you know there is some amount of cleaning you need to do before the data is ready to use. Perhaps the next step is to summarize the bank activity with a PivotTable, or, perhaps to perform a bank rec. Regardless of your ultimate objective, […]
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 […]