Be careful with Excel 365’s Linked Data Types
Sometimes Excel 365’s Linked Data Types are great (Stock and Currencies) and other times they’ll drive you crazy or lead you to use wrong statistics. Here’s some problems we found trying out the, supposedly, simple City data type compared to the similar Geography and Location data types. Just getting the right data can be a […]
Excel 365 now has Nested Linked Data Types
Something new in Excel 365 Linked Data Types is nested data types. If a data field can itself be linked to another data type, Excel will add it automatically. See the ‘Director’ names (from the Movie data type) have little icons next to them? That’s because Excel has added the People data type when we […]
Psi upper Ψ or lower ψ symbols in Word and Office
How to insert the Psi upper case Ψ, and Psi lower case ψ symbols in Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint, or Outlook. Both in Office for Windows and Office for Mac. Psi (uppercase Ψ / lowercase ψ) is the 23rd letter of the Greek alphabet. The symbols are commonly used within physics to represent wave functions in quantum […]
Xi upper Ξ or lower case ξ symbol in Word and Office
Insert the Xi upper case Ξ, and Xi lower case ξ symbols in Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint, or Outlook. Both in Office for Windows and Office for Mac. Xi (uppercase Ξ / lowercase ξ) is the 14th letter of the Greek alphabet. The symbols are used within various contexts. The uppercase letter is often used in pure […]
Time durations are possible in Excel
” How can I enter a duration in Excel with the format days:hours:minutes:seconds ? If I enter 5:32 Excel converts that to 5:32am but I want to record 5 hours and 32 minutes.” Time durations aren’t very clear in Excel, but they are possible. The time features are mostly aimed towards date and time so […]
File open bug in Word & Office for iPad! Try this
The latest releases of Office for iPad are crashing when opening documents. Here’s what to do while Microsoft fixes the bug. The problem appears to happen when trying to open documents from OneDrive, which is the vast majority of documents because Microsoft encourages use of OneDrive. The bug is reported in the latest releases of […]
Sequence() for ordered numbers in Excel 365
Use Sequence() to get an ordered list of numbers either increasing or decreasing and with your choice of increments. Sequence is possibly the least understood of the dynamic array functions but combined with other functions it greatly extends Excel’s power. Sortby(), Filter(), Unique() and RandArray() all have obvious uses but Sequence() seems almost pointless. Here’s […]
Random Numbers and more in Excel
About the RAND() function to make random numbers in Excel plus related functions RandBetween() and RandArray() plus some tricks for getting whole numbers only and even rolling ‘dice’ made in Excel. By Michael Barden Typing the =rand() function into a cell in an Excel spreadsheet will return a random number that is greater than or […]
Sabotaging Excel’s Random Numbers
A reader asks about sabotaging a random number generator. Steven H writes … The article on randomness in Excel was quite interesting, and the link to random.org was neat. Two thoughts come to mind almost immediately though: If you have an application where you absolutely need true random numbers, it is most likely the type […]
Truly random numbers are possible in Excel
With Random.org you can get truly random numbers for Excel plus options not available in the spreadsheet program like random but unique numbers with no repeats and random dates. Using ‘True’ Random numbers in Excel Our article on Random Numbers in Excel continues to surprise us by being one of the most popular pages on our […]
Unique filters in Excel – the manual ‘one-off’ options
There are two a simple ways to make a list of unique or non-duplicate entries from a longer list. Unlike the many automatic ‘unique’ options in Excel, these options work only once but it’s available in many Excel releases, old and new. Advanced Filter One is hiding at Data | Sort & Filter | Advanced […]
Unique() makes a once difficult task really easy in Excel
The new Unique() dynamic array function doesn’t let you do anything new in Excel, but it makes a once-complicated task into simplicity itself. Unique or distinct, no-duplicate lists, counting and sorting the results are all possible with easy formulas that won’t confuse. For as long as there’s been Excel, people have wanted to get ‘unique’ […]
Extend UNIQUE() for distinct values that appear more than once
Excel’s Unique() function itself can’t show distinct values that appear more than once in a list. Repeated only items in a distinct list are possible with a simple extended formula. We’ve already shown the basics of Unique() either getting a list of Distinct values or values that only appear once aka Unique. But Unique() doesn’t […]
Have your say on Word’s new default font
Microsoft has decided that Calibri is getting a little tired, so it’s asking customers to vote on which font will replace it. Calibri has been the default font since Office 2007. It’s familiar to most people whether they realise it or not because it appears in many Word documents. The two fonts, Calibri (body text) […]
Office 2019 for Windows – all the facts, prices and warnings
Here’s all about Office 2019 for Windows – the facts, prices and shortcomings. There’s a matching page about Office 2019 for Mac. Before you get too excited Do NOT buy Office 2019 if you have Microsoft 365 like Microsoft 365 Family (formerly Home), Microsoft 365 Personal or an enterprise plan. In other words, you pay for […]
Office 2019 for Mac – all the facts, prices and warnings
All about Office 2019 for Mac the facts, prices and warnings. There’s a matching page about Office 2019 for Windows. Before you get too excited Do NOT buy Office 2019 if you have Microsoft 365 plan like Microsoft 365 Family (formerly Home), Microsoft 365 Personal or an enterprise plan. In other words, you pay for […]
