When working with large datasets, it can be helpful to see a few areas of the same worksheet at a time to compare different subsets of data. This can be done by using Excel's Split Screen feature. Continue reading
Having spreadsheets in two different windows makes many Excel tasks easier. One of the possible solutions is viewing workbooks side by side, but this eats a lot of space and isn't always the best option. Continue reading
Getting a lot of #N/A errors in your worksheets and are curious to know if there is a way to replace them with a user-friendly message? IFNA formula is the solution you need. Continue reading
The tutorial talks about how to return a column number in Excel using formulas and how to number columns automatically. Continue reading
When Excel cannot find what it is asked for, a #N/A! error appears in a cell. To intercept and handle such errors, you can use the ISNA function. Continue reading
Imagine this: you want to export your Excel data to another application. Whatever CSV option you use, the result is a semicolon-separated file instead of comma-separated you really wanted. The setting is default, and you have no idea how to change it. Continue reading
When viewing a large worksheet for a long time, you may eventually lose track of where your cursor is and which data you are looking at. To know exactly where you are at any moment, get Excel to automatically highlight the active row and column for you! Continue reading
When you have data in two different lists, you may often need to compare them to see what information is missing in one of the lists or what data is present in both. Comparison can be done in many different ways, which method to use depends on exactly what you want from it. Continue reading
Today we’ll continue exploring custom Excel functions. Now that you know how to create UDFs, let’s dig a bit deeper and learn how to use and store user-defined functions in Excel. Continue reading
At first sight, Excel has everything you could ever need for text string manipulations. Hmm… what about regular expressions? Oops, there are no built-in Regex functions in Excel. But no one says we cannot create our own ones :) Continue reading
As you already know how to create UDFs (and, I hope, you’ve also tried applying them in your Excel), let’s dig a bit deeper and see what can be done in case your user defined function is not working. Continue reading
Whichever input data you are using, you'll hardly encounter a dataset without spaces. In most cases, whitespace is good. In some situations, however, it may become evil - extra spaces can mess up your formulas and make your worksheets almost unmanageable. Continue reading
This article will help you understand the differences between UDF and Macro. Also, custom functions have many advantages, but there are also many limitations when using them. Continue reading
Microsoft Excel provides a number of functions to extract text from cells. Those functions can cope with most of string extraction challenges in your worksheets. Most, but not all. When the Text functions stumble, regular expressions come to rescue. Continue reading
This article shows how to add a help text to UDF and explains why these functions are not recalculated. You will see the differences between volatile and non-volatile custom functions. Continue reading
The name CSV (comma separated values) implies the use of comma to separate data fields. But that is in theory. In practice, many so-called CSV files separate data using other characters such as semicolon or tabs. The lack of standard spawns various problems with CSV to Excel conversions. Continue reading
This article will introduce you to user defined functions in Excel. You’ll see different variants of user defined functions and learn how to create and apply them. Continue reading
If you often export files in the CSV format from different applications, you may end up having a bunch of individual files relating to the same subject matter. The question is - is there a simple way to import them all into a single Excel workbook? Continue reading
Have you ever thought how powerful Excel would be if someone could enrich its toolbox with regular expressions? We have not only thought but worked on it :) And now, you can add this wonderful RegEx function to your own workbooks and wipe out substrings matching a pattern in no time! Continue reading
Microsoft Excel provides a number of options to replace one piece of text with another. Why would one want to complicate things with regexes? Because Excel's standard features can only process an exact string that you specify. Continue reading
When it comes to restricting user input in Excel worksheets, Data Validation is indispensable. It can do anything you can possibly imagine. What if I want to allow entering only valid email addresses or strings that match a specific pattern? Alas, that's not possible. Regex you say? Hmm… that might work! Continue reading
When you need to find a certain value in a range of cells, you use the Excel MATCH function. When looking for a specific string in a cell, the FIND and SEARCH functions come in handy. And how do you know if a cell contains information that matches a given pattern? Obviously, by using regular expressions. Continue reading
Traditionally, string concatenation in Excel is done with the help of the CONCATENATE function or the ampersand symbol. In modern Excel, these old-school methods give way to CONCAT - a newer and improved function to combine text from multiple cells into one cell. Continue reading
When working with text data in Excel, you may sometimes need to add the same text to existing cells to make things clearer. For example, you might want to put some prefix at the beginning of each cell, insert a special symbol at the end, or place certain text before a formula. Continue reading
Table is one of the most useful things in Excel that makes managing, calculating and updating data a lot easier. Under certain circumstances, however, a table format may not suite your needs. This short tutorial will teach you how to turn a table into a normal range without losing your data. Continue reading
In this tutorial, we will look at the most common cases of removing characters in Excel. Want to delete specific text from multiple cells? Or maybe strip the first or last character in a string? Or perhaps remove only a specific occurrence of a given character? Whatever your task is, you will find more than one solution for it! Continue reading
When importing data to Excel from somewhere else, a whole lot of special characters may appear in your worksheets. Even more frustrating is that some characters are invisible, which produces extra white space before, after or inside text strings. Continue reading
In the recent couple of articles, we've looked at different ways to remove characters from strings in Excel. Today, we'll investigate one more use case - how to delete everything before or after a specific character. Continue reading
When working with unstructured text data, you often need to parse it to retrieve relevant information. This article will teach you a few simple ways to remove any number of characters from the left or right side of a text string. Continue reading
Imagine this: you receive raw data for analysis and find out that numbers are mixed with text in one column. In most cases, it will certainly be more convenient to have them in separate columns for closer examination. Continue reading
