A recent update to Excel has made a major improvement to Excel PivotTables.
Its the first week of 2025 and I just built my first pivot of the year AND the number format from the source data was applied to the PivotTable – WOOHOO!
I did a short video showing the new feature in action.
I have been using the tbl prefix for my formatted table names in Excel for a long time. There are a few good reasons I use it.
Often when you import data into Excel the dates may include a time. This can make summarising the data more difficult as time is included as a fraction of a date. You can use an old function to fix the problem. This solution requires the subscription version of Excel.
In previous versions of Excel when you had a drop-down list that contained duplicates those duplicates would show up in the drop-down list. This has been fixed in the latest versions of Excel. The duplicates are now removed.
Another post inspired by the book 101 Ready-to-Use Excel Formulas by Michael Alexander and Dick Kusleika. This one is Formula #22 and covers padding entries with zeroes.
I just learned a new trick for labelling subtotal rows in a PivotTable. Hat tip to Ken Puls MVP of Excel Guru for this tip.
When making entries in Excel there are a few keyboard shortcuts worth knowing. These can save you time and effort.
Following on from last week’s post on a single adjustment formula this post will share a more robust solution for including or excluding adjustments.
An application I use recently updated it’s filtering options to allow you to filter by any filters or all filters. This was a useful addition to the software and I thought that I could apply the same idea to Excel’s FILTER function.
Benford’s law is used in auditing to identify data sets that may have been manipulated or adjusted. In my previous post I created a report to analyse a data set based on Benford’s Law. In this post we will create a single formula to create the report and then convert that into a custom function.
Benford’s law is used in auditing to identify data sets that may have been manipulated or adjusted. In actual data sets when reviewing values the 1st digit of the values tends to follow a predetermined frequency. For example, roughly 30% of the values should start with a 1.
It is common in Excel to use averages to summarise large data sets. It is also common to compare the averages across different segments. Here’s a technique you might find useful when comparing a segment against all other segments.
Sometimes Power Queries generate errors. Some errors stop all data being returned and others will return a blank cell for the error in the returned table. You can list the rows that are generating the errors. This can help you identify what is causing the error.
In this recording of a live webinar I ran in late January 2023 you will learn how to import multiple files in a single Power Query. If you use data at all then Power Query is an essential skill to possess.
Use the buttons below the video to download the materials.
Building on the skills covered in the Introduction session, we will start working with multiple files. For example you may have 12 separate CSV files in a folder. All with the same layout, one for each month of the year. Power Query can import all 12 files as if they were a single file and create a table for the whole year
This session covers
• importing multiple CSV files from a folder
• a technique to capture the file name in a field (column)
• importing multiple Excel files
• merging data from multiple tables
• Extracting header information into a column from multiple CSV files
As always, I shared other tips and tricks along the way.
In this recording of a live session ran in late January 2023 you will learn how to automate data importation in Excel with Power Query. If you use data at all then Power Query is an essential skill to possess.
Use the buttons below the video to download the materials.
Power Query allows you to automatically perform data cleansing routines on your data sources – no manual intervention required. Simply refresh and your data is ready to use. You can use csv files; txt files; databases and existing Excel tables as your data sources.
Learn the basics, plus an advanced technique to automate data cleansing routines on your data sources.
This session covers
As always, I shared other tips and tricks along the way.
In this session you will learn all about Excel’s formatted tables. Using Formatted Tables is an essential skill in Excel. Use the buttons below the video to download the materials and completed file.
Many of Excel’s features and functions work seamlessly with formatted tables. They can help you improve the structure and reliability of your spreadsheet files.
Formatted tables can allow you to create powerful reports like those in a relational databases.
Topics covered
As always I shared a few other tips.
I am not a fan of the merged cell format. It causes more problems that it solves. One issue you will face is trying to select a single column range within a range that has a merged cell. Here is how you handle it.
This post is a video post as it easier to show the problem and the solution in a video.
If you need to find the movement from the previous month a PivotTable can be your friend and do most of the work for you.
The MIN and MAX functions can provide easy ways to capture current dates.
One of the problems with Excel’s Data Validation is that it is possible to have an invalid entry in a data validation cell. This can be caused by Paste Special Values or linked drop downs that don’t update if an earlier drop down is changed. To easily identify invalid cells you can use a macro.
The UNIQUE function has a bit of an issue with blank cells, formulas that return blank cells and zeroes.
If you need a logical test to determine if a list is unique you can use the MODE function with the ISNA function.
When you enter data into Excel you can format as you type. See how in this short video.
This is the recording of the second free Power Query webinar I ran in 2022.
You can watch the first one at this link.
In this session we see how to import multiple files in one Power Query. We look at importing CSV and Excel files.
You can download the materials, including a detailed pdf manual using the button below.
If we have a simple Profit and Loss and we want to figure out a breakeven point, we can use Goal Seek to find it.
We can also use it to see sales required to meet a certain profit.
All in less than in minute.
Let’s say we need to do some testing and we need 1,000 random dates in 2022.
We can use a new function to make this easy to create and easy to change.
RANDARRAY usually works with numbers but in Excel dates are numbers, so we get it to create random dates for us.
I set myself a challenge to do this in less than minute – see how I went in the video below.
When you have multiple filters across columns you may want to clear just the filter in one column. There is a keyboard technique to do that.
I wrote an article years ago explaining how to use a related table to handle financial years in Excel Pivot Tables. You can read the article here. If you only want the months in financial year order you can just add an extra column to your table.
In general, you should reduce the number of columns you import via Power Query to the minimum you require. Here is a quick technique to make that a bit easier.
Excel has a Remove Duplicates option in the Data ribbon. It keeps the first item and removes any further items that match.