excel tips | Excel & VBA

Where are you flying today

Posted on 22 October 2008

USA Today came up with this nice graphic on flight cutbacks by airlines in 2008 compared to the year before. It essentially is a radial chart with a lot of interactivity thrown in. I took a shot at doing this chart in Excel. I cut a lot of corners in the process (the defendant offers lack of data in his defence mylords :-)) but I think I came quite close to achieving some ...

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Speed Gauges – An absolute No No

Posted on 11 September 2008

.....because they take up a lot of space to show just one data element. However, if you still want to go ahead, you may want to take a look at this. (Inspired by the speed gauge depicted on BusinessObjects, now a SAP company). You can download the file here.

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Tracking mouse movements in Excel

Posted on 11 September 2008

I wrote this small program that tracks the movement of the mouse in excel. The program uses an image to return the mouse X,Y coordinates. The shape that follows the mouse changes its attributes as it passes through various points in space. You can download the file here.

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Creating tree structure in excel

Posted on 06 September 2008

You can use the group and outline features in excel to create tree structures. On expanding each node the next branch becomes visible. You can download the file here.

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Excel Dashboard : Data Modelling

Posted on 23 August 2008

If you have followed this till now (silly me, if you’re reading this, you likely might’ve :-)), you’ve completed the first of the three important phases in the development of your dashboard. You may want to use these formulas to get your data up to scratch for the next important step – Data Modeling and the generation of pivot tables. Generating a Pivot Table Once your data has been properly scrubbed, cleaned for errors and filled up, its time to us ...

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60 Useful Excel Formulas That Are Good To Know

Posted on 23 August 2008

60 useful excel formulas that are a good to know DATE = Returns the serial number of a particular date DATEVALUE = Converts a date in the form of text to a serial number DAY = Converts a serial number to a day of the month EOMONTH = Returns the serial number of the last day of the month before or after a specified number of months MONTH = Converts a serial number to a month NOW = ...

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20 Useful Excel Formulas You Must Know

Posted on 23 August 2008

20 Excel formulas you should know DATEVALUE = Converts a date in the form of text to a serial number DAY = Converts a serial number to a day of the month MONTH = Converts a serial number to a month YEAR = Converts a serial number to a year LEFT = Returns the leftmost characters from a text value LEN = Returns the number of characters in a text string RIGHT = Returns the rightmost characters from ...

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Excel Dashboard : Data Organization

Posted on 23 August 2008

Having our first view of the data More often that not, dashboards get prepared with a large amount of data. Even if that’s not the case, it always makes send to have your data nicely laid out. That way, whenever you have to go back and check the accuracy of the data, it becomes so much easier. Let’s work with an example. Suppose we've just been provided with one year’s worth of sales and target numbers for the regional and ...

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Prepare Dashboard Using Excel : Shortcuts in Excel

Posted on 22 August 2008

Also useful would be to arm yourself with some shortcuts, they can be a ton of help when working with large amounts of data. The idea is to just work with the keyboard without having to use the mouse....things work much faster that way. Basic (and necessary) Cut Ctrl + x Copy = Ctrl + c Paste = Ctrl + v Minimize all = WinKey + m Move to first row = Home Move to last row = End Ctrl + ...

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Prepare Dashboard Using Excel : Basics

Posted on 22 August 2008

I'll be using excel 2002 and 2003 for most of this so many of the things that work on these versions may not work on some of the earlier ones. There are certin excel "add-ins" that allow excel to do more things when they are turned-on when they are turned-off ! (Isn't that the case with everythign else though in life :-)) Please be sure to click on Tools -> Add-Ins... and in the add-ins box that appears, check/turn-on "Analysis ToolPak". ...

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Series: Prepare Dashboard Using Excel

Posted on 22 August 2008

"A dasboard is a collection of data and/or graphic elements that allow the reader to make better sense of what's taking place." That's my definition and I'm sticking to it!!! Often times authors will make this definition more complex. A dashboard no matter how complicated or sophisticated, is in the end, just a compilation of data and possibly, graphics. What they do......well they allow the reader "to make more sense of what's taking place". Special emphasis on "more sense". A dashboard will ...

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