Having duplicates in your data can be a huge pain. Have you ever been in a situation where you have a big list of people but some are there twice, or even three times? When you’re working with large datasets, the problem of duplicates is bound to pop up and knowing the best way to get rid of them can help you enormously.
Read MoreKnowing how to take a list of your company’s usernames and quickly convert them into an email list that you can copy and paste right out of Excel and into your email program is an essential time saving skill.
Read MorePivot tables are the heart and soul of data analysis in Excel. Pivots (as they are often called), along with vlookups, will grant you sizable Excel credibility if you know how to use them correctly!
Read MoreExcel Charts, charts, charts. What would data be without the ability to communicate it visually? No one can easily look at a table of numbers and pick out patterns. In order to make sense of your numbers and clearly communicate what you’re getting at, you’ll need to use charts.
Read MoreExcel has dozens of statistical formulas to do some highly complicated tests. Six of these stand out as the most essential (unless you’re a master statistician chugging away at some serious stats.
Read MoreThe IF statement in Excel is a “logic” formula. Logic formulas in Excel let you choose to do something (perform a calculation, do a vlookup, input text, etc) based off criteria you specify.
Read MoreThe vlookup formula is one of the most important formulas to learn in Excel. It’s a bit confusing at first, but once you master it, you’ll be known on the team as the “one who can do the vlookups” and it will save you so much time in the future. If you pick one formula to get fully acquainted with, it should probably be the vlookup.
Read MoreThe basic math formulas in Excel allow you to do, well, basic math. The standard Sum, Count, and Average formulas are more or less self-explanatory and always useful. A few other formulas that are highly practical for all sorts of analyses are Percentile and Percent rank. These allow you to determine where a number lies on the distribution of a set of numbers.
Read MoreIn order to manipulate text in Excel, you need to know how to properly use quotes within a formula (in order to leave spaces between text items, etc), how to use ampersands, and how to use the formulas Right(), Left(), and Trim().
Read MoreThe Insert tab in Excel has a bunch of functions that let you create content in your Excel file that is not contained in a cell itself. You can think of the objects you create with the Insert tab as sitting in a thin layer on top of the cells. This text box, for instance, was created using the Insert tab. Many of the items in this toolbar will be similar to those you may have used in Microsoft Word or PowerPoint. The lines, arrows, text boxes, and other shapes found in these menus allow you to make your Excel file look clean and logical.
Read MoreManaging rows and columns well in Excel will save you lots of time. It is highly useful to be able to quickly select a row or column, move it, resize it, add or delete new rows or columns, and group and hide them. None of this is particularly difficult (there are actually no hard level examples in this section) but there are a few worthwhile tips and tricks to go through that will save you time.
Read MoreThe Text to Columns and Find and Replace functions in Excel are essential for cleaning data; ie, reformatting it, getting rid of errors, and/or extracting only the information you want. If you find yourself in a situation where you have, for example, first and last name in one column but you want two columns, one with first name and one with last, you’d use text to columns to accomplish this.
Read More