Excel Weekly News from Contextures Oct 22, 2013
Show % Difference + more Excel tips
In this week's Excel news, you'll see how to show percent difference in a pivot table, and other tips. Thank you for reading the Excel news!
- Debra ddalgleish@contextures.com
On October 17, 1979, the first version of the VisiCalc spreadsheet application was shipped, and that's why we celebrate Spreadsheet Day on October 17th. I hope that you had a party at your office, and carried on the festivities at home.
In honour of the occasion, I posted a collection of my favourite Excel tweets on my Spreadsheet Day blog, and listed a few interesting spreadsheet articles on my Contextures blog.
With one of the built-in custom calculations in a pivot table, you can quickly show the percent difference between two amounts. In this example, forecast amounts have been entered for each product, and the pivot table shows the % difference between the forecast and the actual units sold.
Click here to see the details: Show Percent Difference in Pivot Table Amounts
The COUNTIF function can check a range of cells, and see if it contains a specific value. For example, type your lucky number in cell D2, and use a COUNTIF formula to see if that number is found in the list of winning numbers. If you have multiple numbers to check, you can use an array-entered COUNTIF formula – press Ctrl + Shift + Enter, instead of just pressing Enter.
Click here to see the details: Check Winning Numbers with COUNTIF Function
Here are a few more Excel articles that I read this week, that you might find useful:
In Excel 2007, data bars were added to the conditional formatting options, and this feature was improved in Excel 2010. Data bars can be used in cells with numbers, to give a quick visual representation of the data.
Watch this short video to see how they work.
For a limited time, Mynda Treacy from My Online training Hub is opening her Excel Dashboard Course, and if you sign up by October 24th, you can get the course for 20% off.
I've been through this course, and highly recommend it. The course is video based, delivered online and is available 24/7. You'll receive comprehensive workbooks and sample dashboards to keep, and there's even an option to download the videos.
Bonus: If you sign up for Mynda's course through one of my links, I'll send you a copy of my new Excel add-in -- Contextures Excel Tools -- when it's ready next month. (If you signed up for one of Mynda's earlier courses through my link, send me an email if you'd like a copy of the new add-in.)
We cleaned out our garden on the weekend, so it will be ready for a new crop next spring. Most of the plants have stopped growing, except for the weeds, of course -- they thrive in any weather! So, it was surprising to see that these lovely purple flowers are still blooming, trailing over the fence from the neighbour's yard.
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