The big weakness in Excel’s Data from Picture
Excel Mobile’s Data from Picture has one big problem, it can’t figure out what’s intended to be in one cell and puts text in many cells. Cell discernment is Data from Picture’s biggest weakness and the Review process makes it hard to fix those problems. For example, text using Excel’s own Accounting format which puts […]
Money template – end of support
Microsoft will be removing Excel’s Money template from Microsoft 365 Personal and Family subscriptions on June 30, 2023. Here’s details on what’s happening to your data and an alternative with a free trial. Ending the Money template is just one of three features being dropped from Microsoft 365 in mid-2023. You’ll no longer receive updates […]
Quick Excel list sorting and filter buttons
Any Excel worksheet that has lists with headings on the top row can quickly get pull-down menus to filter or sort the data. For a regular Excel worksheet, go to the Data tab and click the Filter button. This adds extra pull-down menus to each of the headings. For an Excel Table, the filter buttons […]
Use Pantone Colors in Office documents
You can translate a Pantone PMS code or name into something Microsoft Office; Word, Excel or PowerPoint understands? Sometimes you’re given a specific color using the Pantone color scheme. Most commonly this happens for a corporate logo. The Ford car company specifies ‘PMS 294C’ for their blue logo. McDonald’s uses PMS 123C and PMS 485C […]
Thumbs Down👎emoji in Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Outlook
Thumbs Down or Dislike 👎 can be typed into Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint or Outlook. Both in Office for Windows and Office for Mac. Thumbs Down symbol 👎 or emoji is used to suggest disapproval or dislike. Partnered against Thumbs Up / Like 👍 symbol. How Thumbs Down Sign 👎 looks in different fonts. Here’s […]
Calculate age and other interesting facts using Excel and DateDif()
All you need is a birth date or starting date and Excel can figure out the age, next birthday, days to next birthday or when you reach a milestone like 10,000 or 15,000 days. That’s just some clever tricks with DateDif(). How old is someone or something? To calculate the age, we will need to […]
Inside the Schengen Visa Calculation workbook
Here’s a quick look at some of the modest Excel tricks we used to make the Schengen Visa Calculation worksheet. Table Making the itinerary list an Excel Table lets us make use of some features. Formatting It’s a lot easier to format as a table with banded rows. We’ve turned off the Table | Filter […]
Five ways to turn text into Excel dates
Sometimes you need to convert a date from the Excel cell saved format to a particular format. There are at least five ways to do that. DateValue(), Date() or converting Unix dates to Excel. Simply typing dates into a cell also works but there are traps for the unwary. Excel’s trap when typing in dates […]
Text to Excel Date conversion by adding Zero with Paste Special
Another way to convert text to dates is by adding zero to the text. This is a trick which forces Excel to convert the text into an Excel value so it can then add the zero. Since adding zero doesn’t change the value, you end up with text converted to an Excel value. It’s a […]
Excel Conditional Formatting, beyond the presets
Excel has some nifty and simple options for color highlights the extremes in a list of values. It’s called Conditional Formatting and you can do all sorts of clever things with it. First let’s look at the simple presets that Microsoft has given us, some of the obvious choices they’ve left out and how to […]
IF and Nested IF Statements in Excel
An IF statement might sound like a complicated thing that programmers do, but it’s actually fairly easy to do in Excel. An IF statement basically puts something into a cell depending on certain conditions – if A is true, put X in this cell. You can even use what’s called a nested IF statement if you have […]
Make a PivotTable direct from PowerBI data
It’s now possible to make an Excel PivotTable directly from PowerBI data in Excel 365 for Windows and Excel on the web. Microsoft PowerBI is a cloud-based data accumulation then reporting and visualization (dashboards etc). BI stands for “Business Intelligence”. PowerBI is a separately licensed product for businesses so it’s only available if your organization […]
Otter 🦦 emoji in Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook
Type the fun Otter 🦦 emoji into Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint or Outlook. Both in Office for Windows and Office for Mac. Otter 🦦 emoji represents a light-brown otter (a member of the weasel family) on its back with its paws held together. But the emoji can just be used for a bit of fun. […]
Six ways to number lists in Excel
Excel doesn’t automatically number lists but there are at least six ways to add numbering depending on your needs and how the list appears. Numbering is important but can be annoying when you’ve got a large dataset. If it’s small, it’s easy to number it manually or by an auto-filling sequence. But if it’s inconsistent […]
Duck 🦆 emoji in Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook
Add the Duck 🦆 emoji into Word, Excel, PowerPoint or Outlook. Both in Office for Windows and Office for Mac. Duck 🦆 emoji represents the quacky bird with webbed feet. The emoji is usually depicted as a Mallard. Sometimes used as a substitute for the f-word, because of iPhone’s tendency to autocorrect to the obvious […]
Three new performance boosts for Excel 365
Excel 365 for Windows is getting three performance boosts that you might not notice but speed up your work on less powerful computers. All these Excel 365 for Windows tweaks are designed for what Microsoft politely calls “resource-constrained devices”. That means: CPUs with two cores or less 8GB of RAM or less That’s about the […]