Many things that were hard or complex are now much simpler. Creating dynamic drop down lists based on previous selections used to be tricky in Excel. Dynamic arrays make it straightforward.
Switching Rows and Columns is Now Easier
TRANSPOSE rules
With the introduction of Dynamic Arrays in all versions of Microsoft 365 (formerly Office 365) it is now a lot easier to use the TRANSPOSE function.
The world is becoming like a lunatic asylum run by lunatics.
David Lloyd George (1863 – 1945)
1. If it should exist. It doesn’t.
2. If it does exist, it’s out of date.
Arnold’s First and Second Laws of Documentation.
Excel Chart Title Hack
Linking to a range
I learned something new recently watching a recorded webinar by Jon Peltier. That’s not unusual, he is a charting legend.
Talent is cheaper than table salt. What separates the talented individual from the successful one is a lot of hard work.
Stephen King (1947 – )
The End of SUMPRODUCT
Dynamic arrays will carry it off in to the sunset
The SUMPRODUCT function has been my favourite function for about 20 years. It is so flexible. Soon it will be redundant thanks to dynamic arrays.
Don’t panic.
Douglas Adams (1952-2001)
The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy
Linking text boxes
A trick to allow copying between sheets
Linking to a text box in a sheet is straightforward, unless you want to copy that linked text box to another sheet and retain the link. Here is how you do it.
Standard Technique
To link to a text box you click the text box and then click in the Formula Bar and press = and then click the cell to link to and press Enter.
This works OK on the sheet but if you copy the text box to another sheet it links to the same cell in the other sheet. If that’s what you want, great. If it isn’t then you need to use this technique.
Text box copy technique
Click the text box click in the Formula Bar and press = then instead of clicking on the current sheet click on another sheet tab and click a cell in another sheet then return to the current sheet and then click the cell you actually want to link to and press Enter.
By doing it this way the sheet name is included in the link and that ensures the link is kept when you copy the text box to another sheet.
You could also manually type the sheet name into the Formula Bar, but using the mouse is much easier.
You don’t have to burn books to destroy a culture . Just get people to stop reading them.
Ray Bradbury (1920 – 2012)
The Art of Possibility (2002)
A great book to help you think about things a little differently and hopefully act a little differently too.
Some great ideas and stories, highly recommend.
I listened to the audio book version which had the added benefit of music.
Adding a message to grouping icons
A SUBTOTAL trick
It is best practice to use grouping to hide and unhide rows in Excel. I recently saw a technique that also displays a message.
Excel Textbox Linking Issue
Format resets
You can easily link a textbox to a cell. If you change the link you may have an issue with the text format used.
Extracting End of Quarter Dates in Excel
Another MOD solution
A few years ago I wrote an article on extracting the end of quarter date from a date. I recently had a query that was related and I tweaked the previous solution to solve it.
Fix dd.mm.yy date format
On a recent Webinar I was asked a question about an unusual date structure that was imported. The structure dd.mm.yy was not recognised by Excel as a date. Here is formula that fixes it.
Below is an example of the date issue.
The formula in cell B2 is
=SUBSTITUTE(A2,".","/")*1
As you can see the dates in column A are left aligned. That is a clue that they are not recognised as dates in Excel. Dates are right aligned.
The SUBSTITUTE function replaces the full stop between the numerals with a / and makes it look like a date.
This isn’t sufficient as the SUBSTITUTE function will return text. The *1 at the end converts the text date in to a real date that Excel recognises.
Note: Power Query can also automatically fix dates like these when it imports data.
Related Posts
Indian Financial Year Month Number in Excel
The Indian Financial Year start on 1 April. Like Australia its Financial Year month numbers can be painful. Here is a formula to sort them out.
Retrofit a Factor to an Excel Budget
Range name technique
It is common to have a Factor in a cell or cells in a budget to allow you to easily tweak the numbers by a percentage. If you want to add a Factor to an existing budget model here is how you can do it.
Feedback
With my hair style I can relate to this comment.
Sometimes you need a conditional AVERAGE
AVERAGEIF to the rescue
There are times when estimating numbers that an average is a good message to use.
Filter by Cells Value Excel Hack
Excel has a right click Filter option that speeds up filtering by a single value. You can hack that shortcut to do a little bit more.