Microsoft Office How-Tos
How To: Extract records using MS Excel's advanced filter tool
New to Microsoft Excel? Looking for a tip? How about a tip so mind-blowingly useful as to qualify as a magic trick? You're in luck. In this MS Excel tutorial from ExcelIsFun, the 525th installment in their series of digital spreadsheet magic tricks, you'll learn how to extract records using advanced filter and wild-card criteria. See, for example, how to extract records that start with the letters W or J.
How To: Create a pass-fail grade formula in Microsoft Excel
New to Microsoft Excel? Looking for a tip? How about a tip so mind-blowingly useful as to qualify as a magic trick? You're in luck. In this MS Excel tutorial from ExcelIsFun, the 529th installment in their series of digital spreadsheet magic tricks, you'll learn how to create a pass-fail grading formula using the IF and AND and VLOOKUP functions.
How To: Enter VLOOKUPs in 4 different ways in Microsoft Excel
New to Microsoft Excel? Looking for a tip? How about a tip so mind-blowingly useful as to qualify as a magic trick? You're in luck. In this MS Excel tutorial from ExcelIsFun, the 527th installment in their series of digital spreadsheet magic tricks, you'll learn how to enter VLOOKUPs 3rd Argument in four different ways: Number, COLUMN function, COLUMNS function, or MATCH function. col_index_num or Column Number for VLOOKUP
How To: Count with two criteria in Microsoft Excel
New to Microsoft Excel? Looking for a tip? How about a tip so mind-blowingly useful as to qualify as a magic trick? You're in luck. In this MS Excel tutorial from ExcelIsFun, the 529th installment in their series of digital spreadsheet magic tricks, you'll learn how to use the SUMPRODUCT and COUNTIFS functions to count how many sales you made for a given product over the last 7 days.
How To: Count blanks in an dynamic range in Microsoft Excel
New to Microsoft Excel? Looking for a tip? How about a tip so mind-blowingly useful as to qualify as a magic trick? You're in luck. In this MS Excel tutorial from ExcelIsFun, the 532nd installment in their series of digital spreadsheet magic tricks, you'll learn how to count blanks in a dynamic range using the COUNTIF, INDEX, MATCH, COUNTA and OFFSET functions. Learn about the difference between an empty cell and a blank. Also see how to create dynamic ranges with INDEX and OFFSET (Index:Index).
How To: Extract numbers from middle of text in Microsoft Excel
New to Microsoft Excel? Looking for a tip? How about a tip so mind-blowingly useful as to qualify as a magic trick? You're in luck. In this MS Excel tutorial from ExcelIsFun, the 531st installment in their series of digital spreadsheet magic tricks, you'll learn how to extract numbers from the middle of a text string (e.g., BB34G) becomes 34.
How To: List all modes in a multimodal data set in MS Excel
New to Microsoft Excel? Looking for a tip? How about a tip so mind-blowingly useful as to qualify as a magic trick? You're in luck. In this MS Excel tutorial from ExcelIsFun, the 536th installment in their series of digital spreadsheet magic tricks, you'll learn how to list all modes in a given multimodal data set using Excel 2010's MODE.MULT function.
How To: Check to see if a string contains a value in MS Excel
New to Microsoft Excel? Looking for a tip? How about a tip so mind-blowingly useful as to qualify as a magic trick? You're in luck. In this MS Excel tutorial from ExcelIsFun, the 530th installment in their series of digital spreadsheet magic tricks, you'll learn how to use the OR, SEARCH and ISNUMBER functions to see if the descriptions in a data set contain a given value (in this case, "Repair" or "Rework").
How To: Count whole and half workdays in Microsoft Excel
New to Microsoft Excel? Looking for a tip? How about a tip so mind-blowingly useful as to qualify as a magic trick? You're in luck. In this MS Excel tutorial from ExcelIsFun, the 535th installment in their series of digital spreadsheet magic tricks, you'll learn how to use the NETWORKDAYS, NETWORKDAYS.INTL, WEEKDAY, ROW, INDIRECT and SUMPRODUCT functions to count weekdays including half (1/2) workdays.
How To: Change a pivot table's source data in Microsoft Excel
New to Microsoft Excel? Looking for a tip? How about a tip so mind-blowingly useful as to qualify as a magic trick? You're in luck. In this MS Excel tutorial from ExcelIsFun, the 556th installment in their series of digital spreadsheet magic tricks, you'll learn how to change the source data for a pivot table (PivotTable).
How To: Calculate commissions with Excel's IF & VLOOKUP
New to Microsoft Excel? Looking for a tip? How about a tip so mind-blowingly useful as to qualify as a magic trick? You're in luck. In this MS Excel tutorial from ExcelIsFun, the 555th installment in their series of digital spreadsheet magic tricks, you'll learn how to use the IF and VLOOKUP functions to make one of two types of commission calculations based on what is put in the referral column.
How To: Sum dollar amounts from a column in Micrsoft Excel
New to Microsoft Excel? Looking for a tip? How about a tip so mind-blowingly useful as to qualify as a magic trick? You're in luck. In this MS Excel tutorial from ExcelIsFun, the 553rd installment in their series of digital spreadsheet magic tricks, you'll learn how to use the CELL and SUMIF functions to sum Dollar and Euro amounts from a column.
How To: Look up & retrieve a row of data from a table in Excel
New to Microsoft Excel? Looking for a tip? How about a tip so mind-blowingly useful as to qualify as a magic trick? You're in luck. In this MS Excel tutorial from ExcelIsFun, the 552nd installment in their series of digital spreadsheet magic tricks, you'll learn how to look up and retrieve a row of data from a table and display it vertically using the VLOOKUP and ROWS functions.
How To: Count certain days of the week in Microsoft Excel
New to Microsoft Excel? Looking for a tip? How about a tip so mind-blowingly useful as to qualify as a magic trick? You're in luck. In this MS Excel tutorial from ExcelIsFun, the 551st installment in their series of digital spreadsheet magic tricks, you'll see a great non-array formula for counting Mondays between a start and end date.
How To: Use VLOOKUP to verify a record is in an Excel table
New to Microsoft Excel? Looking for a tip? How about a tip so mind-blowingly useful as to qualify as a magic trick? You're in luck. In this MS Excel tutorial from ExcelIsFun, the 558th installment in their series of digital spreadsheet magic tricks, you'll learn how to check if a record is in a table using VLOOKUP. See how to do this for a 2 column (field) table and a 4 column (field) table. See also how to add a concatenated column and concatenate lookup_value in VLOOKUP function.
How To: Extract the nth word from a text string in Excel
New to Microsoft Excel? Looking for a tip? How about a tip so mind-blowingly useful as to qualify as a magic trick? You're in luck. In this MS Excel tutorial from ExcelIsFun, the 559th installment in their series of digital spreadsheet magic tricks, you'll learn how to extract the first, last or nth word from a text string using Excel's SUBSTITUTE, LEN, SEARCH, REPLACE, LEFT, RIGHT and MID functions.
How To: Use the * and ? wildcards in Microsoft Excel
New to Microsoft Excel? Looking for a tip? How about a tip so mind-blowingly useful as to qualify as a magic trick? You're in luck. In this MS Excel tutorial from ExcelIsFun, the 561st installment in their series of digital spreadsheet magic tricks, you'll learn how to use the * and ? COUNTIF wildcards in Excel.
How To: Extract first, middle, & last names in Microsoft Excel
New to Microsoft Excel? Looking for a tip? How about a tip so mind-blowingly useful as to qualify as a magic trick? You're in luck. In this MS Excel tutorial from ExcelIsFun, the 562nd installment in their series of digital spreadsheet magic tricks, you'll learn how to extract first, middle and last names when the list contains names where some have a middle name and some do not using the LEFT, SEARCH, LEN, SUBSTITUTE, LEN, MID and IF functions.
How To: Sort data horizontally by formula in Microsoft Excel
New to Microsoft Excel? Looking for a tip? How about a tip so mind-blowingly useful as to qualify as a magic trick? You're in luck. In this MS Excel tutorial from ExcelIsFun, the 471st installment in their series of digital spreadsheet magic tricks, you'll learn how to sort horizontally with 3 different formulas that use the LARGE, SMALL, COLUMNS, IFERROR and IF functions.
How To: Calculate probability in an Excel pivot table
New to Microsoft Excel? Looking for a tip? How about a tip so mind-blowingly useful as to qualify as a magic trick? You're in luck. In this MS Excel tutorial from ExcelIsFun, the 55th installment in their series of digital spreadsheet magic tricks, you'll learn how to calculate probabilities with a pivot table (PivotTable). Specifically, you'll learn how to find joint, marginal and conditional probabilities.
How To: Return a sorted list based on row values in MS Excel
return a descending sorted list of country names based on the values in a row using an array formula that itself makes use of Excel's INDEX, MATCH, RANK, COLUMN and COLUMNS functions.
How To: Conditionally format a bar chart in Microsoft Excel
New to Microsoft Excel? Looking for a tip? How about a tip so mind-blowingly useful as to qualify as a magic trick? You're in luck. In this MS Excel tutorial from ExcelIsFun, the 566th installment in their series of digital spreadsheet magic tricks, you'll learn how to use the IF functions and a bar chart to create a conditionally formatted chart for students scores that exceed a given hurdle.
How To: Create a line chart with time as its x-axis in Excel
New to Microsoft Excel? Looking for a tip? How about a tip so mind-blowingly useful as to qualify as a magic trick? You're in luck. In this MS Excel tutorial from ExcelIsFun, the 284th installment in their series of digital spreadsheet magic tricks, you'll learn how to create a line chart from years and percentage change. See how Excel makes the chart wrong, but then see how to fix it.
How To: Make a chart from noncontiguous data in Excel 2007
New to Microsoft Excel? Looking for a tip? How about a tip so mind-blowingly useful as to qualify as a magic trick? You're in luck. In this MS Excel tutorial from ExcelIsFun, the 258th installment in their series of digital spreadsheet magic tricks, you'll learn how to make charts from noncontiguous data in MS Excel.
How To: Look up approximate values with VLOOKUP in MS Excel
Love Microsoft Excel? This clip contains a tip that just might induce you to. With this free video tutorial from ExcelIsFun, the 112th installment of his "YouTubers Love Excel" or YTLE series of free video MS Excel lessons, you'll learn how to solve a common VLOOKUP problem — how to look up approximate values. If the lookup table for the VLOOKUP function is looking up approximate values, the first column of the table must be sorted in ascending order. Learn to love digital spreadsheets more p...
How To: Hide columns and select only visible cells in MS Excel
Love Microsoft Excel? This clip contains a tip that just might induce you to. With this free video tutorial from ExcelIsFun, the 34th installment of his "YouTubers Love Excel" or YTLE series of free video MS Excel lessons, you'll learn how to hide columns, select visible cells only, and then copy and paste just those visible cells (all with and without the use of formulas). Learn to love digital spreadsheets more perfectly with the tricks outlined in this free Microsoft Office how-to.
How To: Sort and extract by cell color in Microsoft Excel 2007
Love Microsoft Excel? This clip contains a tip that just might induce you to. With this free video tutorial from ExcelIsFun, the 33rd installment of his "YouTubers Love Excel" or YTLE series of free video MS Excel lessons, you'll learn how to sort by color in Excel 2007 as well as how to use the copy and paste tools to extract records. Learn to love digital spreadsheets more perfectly with the tricks outlined in this free Microsoft Office how-to.
How To: Evaluate a random value against criteria in MS Excel
Love Microsoft Excel? This clip contains a tip that just might induce you to. With this free video tutorial from ExcelIsFun, the 28th installment of his "YouTubers Love Excel" or YTLE series of free video MS Excel lessons, you'll learn how to use the INDEX, RANDBETWEEN, COUNTA, IF, AND, & VLOOKUP functions together to select a random employee from a list, determine if they have meet the given criteria and then conditionally format the relevant cells according to the result. Learn to love digi...
How To: Retrieve many items for a one lookup value in MS Excel
New to Microsoft Excel? Looking for a tip? How about a tip so mind-blowingly useful as to qualify as a magic trick? You're in luck. In this MS Excel tutorial from ExcelIsFun, the 360th installment in their series of digital spreadsheet magic tricks, you'll see an array formula that looks up one value and returns multiple items.
How To: Look up formulas in Excel with the CHOOSE function
New to Microsoft Excel? Looking for a tip? How about a tip so mind-blowingly useful as to qualify as a magic trick? You're in luck. In this MS Excel tutorial from ExcelIsFun, the 557th installment in their series of digital spreadsheet magic tricks, you'll learn how to use the CHOOSE function look up a formula or function depending on your drop-down selection. See also how to create combo box form controls and data validation lists with the VLOOKUP function.
How To: Create a two-variable data table in Microsoft Excel
New to Microsoft Excel? Looking for a tip? How about a tip so mind-blowingly useful as to qualify as a magic trick? You're in luck. In this MS Excel tutorial from ExcelIsFun, the 255th installment in their series of digital spreadsheet magic tricks, you'll learn how to create a two-variable data table in Excel for what-if analysis. See the PMT function and learn about the formula equivalent to a data table.
How To: Use the STDDEV IF function in Microsoft Excel
New to Microsoft Excel? Looking for a tip? How about a tip so mind-blowingly useful as to qualify as a magic trick? You're in luck. In this MS Excel tutorial from ExcelIsFun, the 145th installment in their series of digital spreadsheet magic tricks, you'll learn how to create a formula that will calculate the standard deviation when you have more than 1 criterion.
How To: Quickly create columns of words & numbers in MS Excel
New to Microsoft Excel? Looking for a tip? How about a tip so mind-blowingly useful as to qualify as a magic trick? You're in luck. In this MS Excel tutorial from ExcelIsFun, the 390th installment in their series of digital spreadsheet magic tricks, you'll learn how to create a column of words and numbers quickly with two different formulas as well a a mouse trick that will allow you to paste special values.
How To: Use numerical truth values in Microsoft Excel
New to Microsoft Excel? Looking for a tip? How about a tip so mind-blowingly useful as to qualify as a magic trick? You're in luck. In this MS Excel tutorial from ExcelIsFun, the 367th installment in their series of digital spreadsheet magic tricks, you'll see that the IF function sees -1, 1, 10 and -1.23 as TRUE and 0 as FALSE and learn how to use this fact to your advantage when writing formulas.
How To: Delete only cell content or formatting in MS Excel
New to Microsoft Excel? Looking for a tip? How about a tip so mind-blowingly useful as to qualify as a magic trick? You're in luck. In this MS Excel tutorial from ExcelIsFun, the 575th installment in their series of digital spreadsheet magic tricks, you'll learn how to selectively delete. Specifically, you'll se how to delete the cell contents only, formatting only, the entire cell, or formatting and content together.
How To: Create dynamic ranges for formulas with Excel's OFFSET
New to Microsoft Excel? Looking for a tip? How about a tip so mind-blowingly useful as to qualify as a magic trick? You're in luck. In this MS Excel tutorial from ExcelIsFun, the 584th installment in their series of digital spreadsheet magic tricks, you'll learn how to use the OFFSET function and defined names to create dynamic ranges for formulas so formulas update each period when a new data dump (copy and paste) is completed.
How To: Build a conditional average calculation table in Exel
New to Microsoft Excel? Looking for a tip? How about a tip so mind-blowingly useful as to qualify as a magic trick? You're in luck. In this MS Excel tutorial from ExcelIsFun, the 583rd installment in their series of digital spreadsheet magic tricks, you'll learn how to use the AVERAGEIF & IFERROR functions with absolute and mixed cell references to create a large table of conditional average calculations (averaging with criteria).
How To: Fix the nine most common types of Excel errors
New to Microsoft Excel? Looking for a tip? How about a tip so mind-blowingly useful as to qualify as a magic trick? You're in luck. In this MS Excel tutorial from ExcelIsFun, the 582nd installment in their series of digital spreadsheet magic tricks, you'll learn how to understand and fix the nine most common formula errors in Microsoft Excel. Specifically, you'll learn how to interpret and resolve #######, #NAME?, #N/A, #REF!, #VALUE!, #NUM!, #DIV/0!, Circular Cell Reference, and #NULL! errors.
How To: Automatically color alternating rows in Excel
This video is a tutorial on using the Conditional Formatting function of Excel to automatically color alternating rows, which helps your eye to follow across the row. This can be done manually with the “Fill Color” button, but if you add or delete rows after applying the shading, the whole purpose is defeated.
How To: Sort Excel data in custom order
This how to video shows you how to sort data in Excel in a custom order. First, open a spread sheet in Excel. Select a column of cells with words that you want sorted. Click the office button and select Excel options. Go to edit custom list. You will see different custom lists. Click import to import your selection as a custom list. Next, you can go back to a sheet with those words that you want sorted and click the sort command. Select custom list on the order tab and select your new custom ...