Enough about VLOOKUPs and pivot tables! Let’s go into the dark corners of Excel and uncover some of its underused power.
Advanced Filter
Extract and isolate data in ways that you can’t with Excel’s regular filter. Example:
4000 transactions, 2100-ish individual customers (you’re not going to count that). Advanced filter can instantly generate a list of just those unique customers.
Tables
Join the 1% and use Excel Tables! Tables can replace dozens of delicate formulas. They allow your formulas to adjust as your source data shrinks and expands.
Dropdown lists are easily modified when they are tied to tables. If you’ve never made a dropdown list, you’ll see the right way to do it.
Power Query
Introduced with Excel 2013 Pro Plus, Power Query does what Excel users have needed for a long time. Have you needed to append one massive dataset to the bottom of another massive dataset? Power Query can help. It can also import your Facebook data directly into Excel. Come and see!
