'Excel Tips and How-to' category archive, page 5
How to show, hide and restore missing ribbon in Excel
Ribbon is the central point of whatever you do in Excel, the area where most of features and commands available to you reside. Do you feel the ribbon takes up too much of your screen space? No problem, one click of your mouse, and it is hidden. Continue reading
Quick Access Toolbar in Excel: how to customize, move, reset and share
Getting to the commands you use most often should be easy. And it is exactly what the Quick Access Toolbar is designed for. Add your favorite commands to the QAT so they are only a click away no matter what ribbon tab you currently have open. Continue reading
Developer tab in Excel: how to add, use and remove
You want to access one of advanced Excel features but are stuck at the very first step: where's the Developer tab they all talk about? The good news is that the Developer tab is available in every version of Excel though it is not enabled by default. This article shows how to quickly activate it. Continue reading
How to calculate percentage variance in Excel - percent change formula
In Microsoft Excel, there are 6 different functions for calculating variance but all of them are designed to find variance in the classical sense, i.e. how far a set of values are spread out from their average. In this article, you will learn how to calculate percentage variance between two cells. Continue reading
How to calculate variance in Excel - VAR, VAR.S, VAR.P and other functions
Variance is one of the most useful tools in probability theory and statistics. In science, it describes how far each number in the data set is from the mean. In practice, it often shows how much something changes. In this article, we will analyze different methods of calculating variance in Excel. Continue reading
How to add vertical line to Excel chart: scatter plot, bar chart and line graph
Even in the modern versions of Excel, there is no easy way to insert a vertical line in a chart. However, "no easy way" does not mean no way at all. We will just have to do a little lateral thinking! Continue reading
How to make a loan amortization schedule in Excel (with extra payments)
The tutorial shows how to make an amortization schedule in Excel to detail periodic payments on an amortizing loan or mortgage, including an amortization schedule with extra payments and a variable number of periods. Continue reading
Excel IPMT function to calculate interest portion of a loan payment
The interest portion of a loan payment can be calculated manually by multiplying the period's interest rate by the remaining balance. But Microsoft Excel has a special function for this – the IPMT function. In this tutorial, we will go in-depth explaining its syntax and providing real-life formula examples. Continue reading
Excel PPMT function with formula examples
When you make periodic payments on a loan or mortgage, a certain part of each payment goes towards the interest and the remainder is applied to the loan principal. In this tutorial, we will look at how to use the PPMT function to calculate the principal portion of the payment. Continue reading
How to use PMT function in Excel with formula examples
Before you borrow money it's good to know how a loan works. Thanks to the Excel financial functions such as PMT, PPMT and IPMT, computing periodic payments for a loan is easy. In this tutorial, we will have a closer look at the PMT function. Continue reading
How to add error bars in Excel: standard and custom
Scientists love quantifying different things, and they even found a way to quantify uncertainty. For this, they calculate confidence intervals, or margins of error, and display them by using error bars. Continue reading
TREND function and other ways to do trend analysis in Excel
These days when technologies, markets and customer needs are changing so rapidly, it is critical that you move with trends, and not against them. Trend analysis can help you identify underlying patterns in data movements and project future behavior. Continue reading
How to forecast in Excel: linear and non-linear forecasting methods
In statistics, there exist many different forecasting techniques and some of these techniques are already implemented in Excel. This tutorial will teach you how to forecast in Excel based on historical data and may help you save money on specialized forecasting software. Continue reading
Excel FORECAST and other forecasting functions with formula examples
In Microsoft Excel, there are several functions that can help you create linear and exponential smoothing forecasts based on historical data such as sales, budgets, cash flows, stock prices, and the like. Continue reading
How to use Flash Fill in Excel 2019, 2016 and 2013
Flash Fill is one of the most amazing features of Excel. It grabs a tedious task that would take hours to be performed manually and executes it automatically in a flash. Continue reading
Excel CELL function with formula examples
The fastest way to get some specific information about a cell in Excel is to use the CELL function. Among other things, it can tell you whether a cell is protected or not, retrieve the cell address and value, show a full path to the workbook that contains the cell, and a lot more. Continue reading
Excel ADDRESS function with formula examples
To create a cell reference in Excel, you can type the column and row coordinates manually. Alternatively, you can get a cell address from the row and column numbers supplied to the ADDRESS function. Continue reading
Excel cell reference: how to make and use
As simple as it seems, Excel cell reference confuses many users. How is a cell address defined in Excel? What is an absolute and relative reference and when each should be used? In this tutorial, you will find answers to these and many more questions. Continue reading
Structured reference in Excel tables
One of the most useful features of Excel tables are structured references. When you have just stumbled upon a special syntax for referencing tables, it may look boring and confusing, but after experimenting a bit you will surely see how useful and cool this feature is. Continue reading
How to do Spearman correlation in Excel
When doing correlation analysis in Excel, in most cases you will deal with the Pearson correlation. But when the underlying assumptions of the Pearson correlation (continuous variables, linearity, and normality) are not met, you can do the Spearman rank correlation instead of Pearson's. Continue reading
