The Excel Team Blog

What's the dif? Gridlines vs borders in spreadsheets

2012-05-23T16:58:00Z

A lot of you want to know the difference between gridlines and borders. Gridlines help you work in a spreadsheet, and borders help you highlight important information in one for your audience. Gridlines appear automatically so you can see how your data is organized into rows and columns; borders need to be added by you so you can highlight certain cells. This post describes how to work with both of them. ...( read more ) Read More......(read more)

Split and recombine data in URLs

2012-05-16T21:43:00Z

Issue: I have a list of URLs with their corresponding page views. The URLs include a section of the site and the date when the page was published. I'd like to calculate the total number of page views by site section and the total number of page views by publication date. I want to reduce the time it would take to manually enter this data into new columns. To save time, I plan on using the Text to Columns wizard and Concatenate function rather than a complex formula. Once you learn the steps,...(read more)

Quick Trick: Resizing column widths in pivot tables

2012-05-08T21:56:00Z

Who could be better than a Business Intelligence analyst at teaching us a thing or two about Excel? We asked our own number-crunching wizard Stacey Armstrong to share some Excel tricks she's learned along the way. In this first one, she shows us how to change the default width of a column in a pivot table. Knowing this is especially helpful when you're working with data that that makes a row really long. ...( read more ) Read More......(read more)

Updated! Try it for free: Count values that meet a condition with the COUNTIF function

2012-05-04T16:39:00Z

Update: See near the bottom of this post for the latest Office how-tos on embedding Excel and PowerPoint files on web pages. You probably know how to use the COUNT function to count cells that contain a value. But what if you want to count only the cells that meet a condition, such as being greater than or equal to a number or date you specify, or that matches text? That's where the COUNTIF function comes in really handy. Keep reading to learn more, and try out this great function for free using...(read more)

Using multiple criteria in Excel Lookup formulas

2012-04-27T01:01:00Z

If you want to look up a value in a table using one criteria, it's simple. You can use a plain VLOOKUP formula. But if you want to use more than one criteria, what can you do? There are lots of ways using several Excel functions such as VLOOKUP, LOOKUP, MATCH, INDEX, etc. In this blog post, I'll show you a few of those ways. ...( read more ) Read More......(read more)

And the winner of the VLOOKUP Great White Shark Award is...

2012-04-11T21:13:00Z

JP Pinto! Congratulations! His post was one of seven chosen by Bill Jelen as the most innovative ones published during VLOOKUP Week . He won a copy Bill Jelens book Microsoft Excel 2010 In Depth. You can find links to all seven posts and see the voting results in our wrap-up post of VLOOKUP Week . ...( read more ) Read More......(read more)

Excel: not just for geeks

2012-04-06T16:46:00Z

Ugh. Excel. It's not as intuitive as a Word doc, and not as aesthetically pleasing as a PowerPoint presentation. If you're more creative than analytical, you might feel as though it's dry and boring and filled with numbers you'd rather not look at. However, I can tell you that after you familiarize yourself with it, it is the best tool Microsoft Office has - and extremely easy to use! This guest post is written by Divya Bahl, a blogger for the popular site Her Campus . ...( read more...(read more)

VLOOKUP Week Wraps Up: Vote For Your Favorite Post

2012-04-04T19:56:00Z

VLOOKUP Week has ended. The brainchild of Excel MVP Bill Jelen, the idea inspired all things VLOOKUP, including VLOOKUP odes, haikus, vampires, and a way to track shark attacks. Setting all fun aside--Excel experts created a crazy number of useful and innovative applications of VLOOKUP in seven days. The week might be over, but thanks to the enthusiasm of the Excel community and to the Web, the information will continue to instruct Excel users at all levels of expertise. So thanks, Bill, and thanks...(read more)

VLOOKUP Tutorial: Updating prices in a master product list

2012-03-28T20:39:00Z

In honor of VLOOKUP Week, MVP Bill Jelen has created a VLOOKUP tutorial for those of you who have a basic working knowledge of Excel but want to improve your skills. You most likely know the core set of functions that come with Excel and have heard that VLOOKUP is an easy way to look up a value in an Excel spreadsheet, speeding up getting work done. But that's about it. Bill's tutorial starts there. ...( read more ) Read More......(read more)

Today's Giveaway: Odes to VLOOKUP (It ain't over until the formulas stop signing)

2012-03-27T19:15:00Z

Bill Jellen found it. Erica Rhein started it. She posted a comment on Facebook declaring her complete dependence on VLOOKUP. "I use Pivot Tables and VLOOKUP every day. I would be screwed at my job without it." To Bill's formula-possessed mind this statement equals a love poem. So he decided today's VLOOKUP Week door prize would be the best Ode to VLOOKUP. Check out the haikus and poems about undying VLOOKUP love already submitted, then or add your own by entering it as a comment...(read more)

Tuesday’s free Webinar: Simplifying your data in Excel

2012-03-26T16:57:00Z

Join Tuesday's free Office 15-Minute Webinar to learn about simpliying data in Excel. You can join the webinar live with the link below at 9:15 am PDT or go to http://aka.ms/offweb for complete information on our webinars. Join online meeting https://join.microsoft.com/meet/dougt/F274WBQZ The best option is to download the free Lync Attendee for sound/video, or you can use your browser and call in for sound: 1 (888) 320-3585. Conference ID: 84172528 What you will learn at Tuesday’s webinar...(read more)

Ride the Shark! It's VLOOKUP Week March 25-31, 2012

2012-03-22T22:39:00Z

What strikes terror into the hearts of Excel beginners? VLOOKUP! Excel power users, though, can't live without it. Excel MVP Bill Jelen has declared March 25 - 31, 2012 to be VLOOKUP week . He's invited his fellow Excel experts to publish VLOOKUP posts on their sites during the week. Already it's taken on a life of its own with VLOOKUP t-shirts and coffee mugs, and a theme song and logo. ...( read more ) Read More......(read more)

What's your favorite thing about Excel Pivot Tables?

2012-03-21T01:43:00Z

Do you belong to LinkedIn ? Did you know that LinkedIn has lots of Excel user groups where Excel trainers, developers, financial modelers, and even Excel blackbelts compete to out geek each other--or just share information. (The Excel Blackbelt group is for data visualization experts.) ...( read more ) Read More......(read more)

What's your favorite thing about Excel PivotTables?

2012-03-21T01:43:00Z

Freeze Panes made simple (Video)

2012-03-14T23:50:00Z

Ever wanted to see just a part of your Excel worksheet that's way over on the right? You scroll over and find the information you're looking for, but your row or column headings-sometimes both-have disappeared. Or maybe you want to see data in one row that's at the bottom of your worksheet (which might contain hundreds or even thousands of rows). How can you go to that row and still see how its data has been categorized in the headings? By using the Freeze Panes commands on the View tab...(read more)