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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
One of the simplest statistical calculations that you can do in Excel is correlation. Though simple, it is very useful in understanding the relations between two or more variables. Microsoft Excel provides all the necessary tools to run correlation analysis, you just need to know how to use them. Continue reading
It is very easy to add a trendline in Excel. The only real challenge is to choose the trendline type that best corresponds to the type of data you are analyzing. In this tutorial, you will find the detailed description of all the trendline options available in Excel and when to use them. Continue reading
When plotting data in a graph, you may often want to visualize the general trend in your data. This can be done by adding a trendline to a chart. Luckily, Microsoft Excel has made inserting a trend line very easy, especially in newer versions. Continue reading
Empty lines can cause a lot of havoc to your worksheets on different levels and deleting them manually can be a time-consuming and error-prone process. In this article, you will learn a few simple and reliable methods to remove blank rows from your Excel worksheets. Continue reading
There may be many situations when you need to create a new spreadsheet based on an existing one or move a tab from one Excel file to another. Luckily, there exist a few easy and quick ways to duplicate sheets in Excel. Continue reading
Duplicating multiple sheets multiple times manually is boring and time consuming. In this tutorial, you will find a handful of macros to automate this task. Continue reading
Empty cells are not bad if you are intentionally leaving them in right places for aesthetic reasons. But blank cells in wrong places are certainly undesirable. Luckily, there is a relatively easy way to remove blanks in Excel. Continue reading
The prospect of reviewing all the columns in your worksheet and removing the empty ones manually is definitely something you'd want to avoid. Luckily, Microsoft Excel provides a great lot of different features, and by using those features in creative ways you can cope with almost any task. Continue reading
Combining data from multiple tables is one of the most daunting tasks in Excel. If you decide to do it manually, you may spend hours only to find out that you've messed up important information. The good news for all Excel users - Power Query or Merge Tables Wizard can be your time-saver. Continue reading
In most situations, first and last names are stored in two separate columns, but occasionally you may need to combine two names in one cell. Luckily, the days of merging anything manually are over. In this tutorial, you will find some quick tricks to combining names in Excel that will save you a lot of boring time. Continue reading
It is a very common situation when different pieces of data are dispersed across many worksheets and workbooks. Fortunately, Excel provides a few tools to combine data from multiple tables into one, and this tutorial will teach you how to use these tools most effectively. Continue reading
You have built a complex formula dependent on multiple variables and want to know how changing those inputs changes the results. Instead of testing each variable individually, set up a What-if analysis data table and observe all the possibilities with a quick glance! Continue reading
On our blog, we already have a handful of Excel IF tutorials and still discover new uses every day. Today, we are going to look at how you can use IF together with the AND function to evaluate two or more conditions at the same time. Continue reading
In situations when there are many points in a scatter graph, it could be a real challenge to spot a particular one. Professional data analysts often use third-party add-ins for this, but there is a quick and easy technique to identify the position of any data point by means of Excel. Continue reading
When looking at two columns of quantitative data in your Excel spreadsheet, what do you see? Just two sets of numbers. Do you want to see how the two sets are related to each other? The scatter plot is the ideal graph choice for this. Continue reading