Data Governance: The Data Boss!
We need to look at the people we place in roles for execution of processes and make Data Gvernance a clearly-stated expectation.
Troubleshooting Complicated Formulae
Have you written a complex formula or had to understand a long formula that someone else wrote? It can become a jungle of parentheses and commas. One simple tip: Use ALT+ENTER in the Formula Bar to Make Troubleshooting and Validation easier Here's a formula I...
Spreadsheet Manipulation: Inserting Rows in a Pattern
The following isn't meant to be a "how-to." This is designed to quickly show how we got over a challenge faced by a client who didn't think that there was a simple solution. Have a look. Maybe this will inspire you to think about ways that your own spreadsheets/data...
Data Governance: Feeling Left Out
Poor Data Hygiene was at a level deeper than your typical typos, shortcuts or incompletions. In this case, the misery was baked into the reports that had been written long ago.
What is a Data Hygienist?
I come in before the Analyst; before the Accountant, before the Database Architect. I come in before the intern who’s going to make a bunch of calls or do a mass mailing. I support the Project Manager who needs to report the real-time truth to her bosses.
One thing all of them loathe is my specialty: the initial gathering up of all of the data and cleaning it.
Good News/Bad News: Converting PDF to Excel Format
There are lots of converters available and that’s the good news. Yes! You can get the information out. of the PDF and into Excel. The bad news: none are perfect. They often output a mess. But at least the mess is editable.
10 Reasons for Hiring a Data Hygienist
Crap data is costing you money. Crap data is keeping you from making money. Your needs don't call for a pre-packaged system with more bells and whistles than you need. Your needs don't call for an expensive pre-packaged system with more bells and whistles than you...
What is that “- -” doing in Excel???
{=sum(- -(b8:b550 < f8:f550))} One more thing I'll whoop on ya today: Excel's spooky little double-negative. S'pose you want to know the number of times something was true, and then do math with it COUNTIF won't help because we're looking for Conditions, as...
Develop a Relationship With the Data
Data can be wily and you never know what's inside a data set until you begin to work with it to scrub it or extract information from it. You might need to do the same procedure from different angles to locate particular oddities. So, forgive yourself for not having...
There Ain’t No Password Protection
Do you work with password protection in Excel spreadsheets? If so, I have good news and bad news. BAD NEWS: the passwords are easy to break GOOD NEWS: the passwords are easy to break If you're sanitizing data, repairing and modifying spreadsheets, it means tracing...
Data Hygiene and Honey Cakes
I've watched this Simon Sinek video several times and it always has me reflect on my passion for Data Hygiene, Data Management and spreadsheets. Throughout the video Simon insists "people don't buy what you do, they buy why you do it." So, why do I do what I do?...
COUNTIF you have errors
Let's say you have 600 rows of data and you're looking at a final number from column W telling you that you are owed a total of $17,384. Can you trust it? Suggestion: Create a formula that looks for any cells in column W that show the error: #NA. =COUNTIF(W:W, "#NA")...