Excel University Blog

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XLOOKUP

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…

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Rows of Dependent Drop Downs

By Jeff Lenning | January 14, 2025 |

When working with drop down lists in Excel, creating dependent drop downs that dynamically adapt based on a primary choice is both powerful and time-saving. This post walks through setting up rows of dependent drop downs and concludes with a method to notify users when a secondary choice becomes invalid. Let’s dive in! Video Step-by-step…

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Formula to Remove Duplicates

By Jeff Lenning | December 10, 2024 |

Removing duplicates in Excel is a common task, but what if you want more control than the Remove Duplicates command provides? Maybe you need a formula to handle duplicates dynamically. In this guide, we’ll cover how to remove duplicates from a single column, handle multiple columns, and use formulas for various scenarios like summing, finding…

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Regex lookups with XLOOKUP

By Jeff Lenning | November 19, 2024 |

Hello, and welcome to this deep dive into the fascinating world of Excel’s XLOOKUP function—specifically using it with RegEx (Regular Expressions). In this post, we’ll cover the basics of XLOOKUP, explore the new RegEx match mode, and demonstrate some practical examples. Whether you’re already familiar with XLOOKUP or just starting out, there’s something here for…

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XLOOKUP Multiple Column Match

By Jeff Lenning | October 29, 2024 |

Hello and welcome! Today, we’re diving into XLOOKUP with multiple conditions. This topic is incredibly handy when working with datasets where you need to match data across multiple columns. We’ll explore three different approaches: using concatenation, Boolean arrays, and the FILTER function to retrieve data based on multiple criteria. Let’s jump right in! Video Table…

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Avoid XLOOKUP Errors

By Jeff Lenning | June 25, 2024 |

This article will help you navigate the waters of common XLOOKUP errors and issues. We’ll first begin by identifying errors, issues, and unexpected results. Then we’ll talk about specific ways to avoid and address each one. I hope this article will help you be able to use this wonderful function more effectively in your workbooks!…

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Replace 25+ Nested IFs with a Single Simple Lookup

By Jeff Lenning | June 11, 2024 |

I was recently asked the following question: “I have a drop-down with 25+ categories that determines the fee percentage. Can I use an IF function to compute the fee based on the selected category?” I answer this question in this post. Video Objective Let’s begin by understanding the objective and the question. There is an…

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Create a Dynamic Month List for Reports or KPIs

By Jeff Lenning | January 30, 2024 |

In this tutorial, we will learn how to create a dynamic list of months in Excel using various functions including TAKE, EOMONTH, and SEQUENCE. This list can be used for reporting or pulling key performance indicators (KPIs) with lookup functions such as XLOOKUP. If you create the same basic report each month, and would like…

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XLOOKUP and FILTER with Wildcard

By Jeff Lenning | November 21, 2023 |

The objective of this tutorial is to show how to use wildcards with the XLOOKUP and FILTER functions in Excel. We will learn how to perform partial matches and search for specific patterns within a dataset. Video Walkthrough Let’s take it one exercise at a time, starting with our XLOOKUP warm-up. Exercise 1: XLOOKUP warm-up…

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Pictures in Excel 3: Pictures with URLs

By Jeff Lenning | August 29, 2023 |

Retrieving and Displaying Online Pictures in Microsoft Excel Introduction Hello and welcome to the next post in our Pictures in Excel series, where we are exploring applications of inserting images into cells. In the previous videos, we focused on inserting pictures from our local devices into cells on the worksheet. Today, we will learn how…

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