Contextures News 20150414

Dashboard webinar + more Excel tips

April 14, 2015

Attend a free dashboard webinar, find data with VLOOKUP, and more, in this week's Excel news. Visit my Excel website for more tips, tutorials and videos, and check the index for past issues of this newsletter.

Note: For some products mentioned below, I earn a commission on sales. That helps support the free tutorials on my site.

1. Corrected Link -- Customize Right-Click Menus

Sorry -- in last week's newsletter, I had the wrong link for AlexJ's sample file to customize right-click menus. Thanks for letting me know, and here is the correct link: Customize Right-Click Menus. (Level - Advanced/VBA)

2. Contextures Posts

In case you missed them, here are the articles that I posted recently:

• Use Excel to track project tasks. Enter task description, estimated and actual times, date completed, and other info. (Level - Intermediate)

• For a humorous peek at what other people are saying about spreadsheets, read the latest collection of Excel tweets, on my Excel Theatre blog.

3. Free Excel Dashboard Webinar

This week, Mynda Treacy, from My Online Training Hub, is leading a free one-hour Excel Dashboard Webinar. There are a few days and times available, so pick the session that best fits your schedule. There were great reviews from people who attended Mynda's previous webinars.

Level - Intermediate

4. Reconcile Accounts With VLOOKUP

Instead of manually comparing two list of accounts, Sharyn Baines shows how to use a VLOOKUP formula to do the job. She explains how to set up the data, enter the formula, and confirm the results.

Level - Basic/Intermediate. (There are more VLOOKUP examples and videos on my website.)

5. Create a Funnel Chart

If you're selling products, thousands of people see your ad, hundreds click on that ad, and a small percentage actually buy something. When you arrange those numbers from largest to smallest, it creates a funnel shape. Sumit Bansal explains how to use a stacked bar chart, with formulas in the source data, to show that funnel in Excel. There is a sample file to download (no macros), a video, and detailed instructions.

Level - Intermediate

6. Free Data Analysis Course Online

On Microsoft's Excel team blog, Professor Felienne Hermans announced that she is offering a free online course -- Data Analysis: Take it to the MAX(). You'll have to set up an account on the edX site, then you can follow along with the course. There is an option to pay, and receive a certificate, but you'll get all the materials, even if you're just doing the free audit.

Level - Intermediate/Advanced, with a bit of programming, later in the course.

7. Slow VBA in Excel 2013

If you have upgraded to Excel 2013, and do any programming in that version, you might find that some things run much slower than they did in previous versions. If so, you'll find an interesting discussion of this problem, on the Daily Dose of Excel blog.

Level - Advanced/VBA. (For help getting started with VBA, see the introduction on my website)

8. Function Tips

On the PC World blog, JD Sartain shared a list of 15 Excel function tips. There are 3 categories -- entering formulas, formulas for common tasks, and bonus tips. The DAYS function is new in Excel 2013, but you don't need it -- you can just subtract the end date from the start date.

Level - Basic/Intermediate. (There is a list of functions, and when they were added, on my website)

9. New DAX Functions

Chris Webb posted a link to Microsoft's documentation for all the new DAX functions that can be used in the Excel 2016 Preview. I'm glad to see that there is finally a UNION function, to combine all the rows of multiple tables.

Level - Advanced

10. Spring Planter

Last weekend, I bought a big clay pot, and my grandson decorated it with painted eggs and bunnies. Then, we filled it with potting soil, and transplanted a few of our tomato, lettuce, parsley and basil seedlings. It was an Easter gift for my parents, and they loved it!

Now it's time to transplant some of the other seedlings too. The starter pots are getting a bit crowded.

That's it for this week! If you have any comments or questions, send me an email.

Debra Dalgleish
dsd@ contextures.com

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