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
OneDrive is a perfect place for sharing your files and collaborating with your colleagues. After someone has shared something with you, the next question is - where do I find those files? 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
There are a few different ways to share documents on OneDrive, and you may be asking yourself which is the best one. For the most part, the answer depends on the situation and your ultimate goals. But I can show you the most secure way. Continue reading
Like most other online storages, OneDrive was designed with collaboration in mind, and they strived to make the sharing process easy and intuitive. However, there are some caveats to take notice of, especially when adding and syncing shared files to your computer. Continue reading
Getting tired of all those smart quotes, accented letters, and other unwanted special characters in Google Sheets? We have a few ideas on how to replace them effortlessly. 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
By default, Excel tables are equipped with a number of great features including predefined table styles. In some situations, however, you may want to remove formatting keeping all other functionality of a table. This tutorial will teach you how to quickly do that. Continue reading
This next bit of our operations with text in spreadsheets is devoted to extraction. Find out ways to extract various data – text, characters, numbers, URLs, email addresses, date & time, etc. – from various positions in multiple Google Sheets cells at once. Continue reading
Excel Conditional Formatting makes it possible to highlight duplicates in every possible way you can think of. But, as usual, there is a "but" - conditional formatting rules work on a cell level while you may want to highlight duplicate text rather than entire cells. This can only be done with macros. Continue reading
How do people usually search in Excel? Mostly, by using the Find & Replace tool, which works just fine for single values. But what if you have tens or even hundreds of items to replace? Luckily, there are a few more effective methods to perform mass replace in Excel, and we are going to look at each of them in detail. Continue reading
If a major part of your online communication is repetitive emails, it would be only natural that you strive to optimize that part of your work. Replying with template can be a great alternative to composing emails from scratch in a tedious keystroke-by-keystroke way. Continue reading
With the introduction of the LAMBDA function, recursive computations in Excel have become available to anyone, not just VBA programmers. To put it simply, you can now construct formulas that behave like a programming language and allow you to achieve so much, with so little, so fast :) Continue reading
Until recently, user-defined functions were the prerogative of programmers. The introduction of the LAMBDA function has made them available for everyone. With this wonderful addition to Excel's toolbox, we no longer need VBA skills to create our own custom functions. Continue reading
An engaging and informative invitation is an important part of running a successful meeting, and a well-crafted template can save you enormous time on the job. This article looks at how to quickly create meeting templates in Outlook, preset any fields, add input boxes, drop-down menus, and more! Continue reading
When doing the same things day in and day out, most irritating is the necessary do it from scratch every time. What would you say if instead of tedious multi-step processes you could accomplish your email routines with a button click? It is what Outlook Quick Steps are all about. Continue reading
It is sad enough when a brand-new feature refuses to work in your Excel. But even more frustrating is when a good old thing stops working all of a sudden, and you are receiving an error for a formula that worked perfectly for years. This tutorial will teach you how to fix a #SPILL error in some popular formulas. Continue reading
Want to create a dropdown list in your email template? Make it possible to select multiple items? Populate a dropdown from a database? You will find all the solutions in this tutorial. Continue reading
This manual will show you different ways to create nested Outlook templates. You’ll see how to use predefined templates and add dynamic fields to your emails. Continue reading
Is duplicate data in your worksheets causing you a headache? This tutorial will teach you how to quickly find, select, color or delete duplicate cells. Continue reading
In this manual you’ll see how to apply conditional formatting to Outlook tables in order to change their borders’ color, width or style. Continue reading
Learn formulas and formula-free ways for Google Sheets to trim whitespaces, remove special symbols (even the first/last N characters) and the same text strings before/after certain chars from multiple cells at once. Continue reading
The recent dynamic array update has bought a wealth of inspiring new capabilities. But all is centered around the core concept of "spilling". So, let's take a close look at this feature and how you can leverage it to improve your Excel experience. Continue reading