Text Format: Excel Keeps Turning My Data Into Dates
QUESTION Joy wants to type 2 - 8 into Excel and 8-FEB is what she keeps getting. No. Joy doesn't want a date, she's already married. The goal is to offer a range of options, one of them being 2 - 8 2 - 8 Hours 2 - 8 Vehicles 2 - 8 Employees 2 - 8 anything How do we...
Text and date in same cell
Joseph, thanks for the twitter question! QUESTION Joseph wanted to put NOW() in cell A1 and have another cell show Today is 9/12/12 Instead, Excel was showing: Today is 41164.950103588 Basically: How do I get text and date in same cell? And formatted properly?...
Control the X-Axis: start at 62 instead of 0
QUESTION: This question was submitted by Frank. He wants to know: How do we control the x-axis and get the line chart to use the ages 62 to 100-ish on the x-axis? The graph takes our range of 62 - 100 and turns the x-axis into 0 to 100? ANSWER Sometimes we can...
What is Crossfooting?
Crossfooting: checking spreadsheet integrity by calculating a result in several different ways. Effective crossfooting includes a signal when the data set is corrupt.
Pivot Tables Part 2
What Are Pivot Tables Used For? What Are Pivot Tables Good For? My last post described spreadsheet Pivot Tables and tonight I was talking with my good friend Patrick Richards. He commented that he wasn't left with a clear sense of what a Pivot Table is. Seems...
Pivot Tables: You’ve heard of ’em but, so what?
What Are Pivot Tables Used For? What Are Pivot Tables Good For? Many of you have heard of Pivot Tables and aren't sure what they are. I'll leave you to Google how to mechanically get one working but if you're like me, teaching the mechanics still won't show the...
Powerful Feature in Excel 15: Flash Fill
The Data Marshall returns to tell you about a feature in the forthcoming Excel 15. It's going to be invaluable in Taming Dataville. There isn't an official release date for Office 15 but there are previews and lots to be excited about. Check out this video from...
Spreadsheet Development: It Was All Fun & Games Until …
There are plenty of tutorials about working inside spreadsheet cells: creating formulae, finding ways to extract elusive data, etc. However, some of the best Data Management attention is spent outside of the spreadsheet cells: development of the overall file. So ......
Starting a Spreadsheet From Scratch
When you start a spreadsheet from scratch, relax and keep the output in mind.
Keyboard Shortcuts
Keyboard shortcuts do increase efficiently. However, I have a personal reason for purposefully avoiding use of keyboard shortcuts.
Data Generator 2: with VLOOKUP & Pivot Table
This video demonstrates one use of data generator results as follow-up to an earlier blog entry, Taming Dataville. In the video below, you will see: Use of dummy data While waiting for someone to create a Master List, I moved ahead by using random fish species where...
The Future of Excel
With the first glimpses of Excel 2013 (as part of Office 15) being released & reviewed it's a good time to address two prognostications about Excel's future. 1. EXCEL IS DEAD, IT HAS NO FUTURE I was on a conference call recently and the premise was that...