When you are looking for something but not exactly sure exactly what, wildcards are a perfect solution. You can think of a wildcard as a joker that can take on any value. There are only 3 wildcard characters in Excel, but they can do so many useful things! Continue reading
Working on a report, investment plan or any other dataset with dates, you may often need to sum values within a specific period. This tutorial will teach you a quick and easy solution - SUMIFS formula with date range as criteria. Continue reading
Microsoft Excel has a special function to sum cells with multiple conditions and the AND logic - the SUMIFS function. In some situations, however, you may need to sum with multiple OR criteria. And this is when the SUMIF function comes in handy. Continue reading
In Excel 365, the XMATCH function was added to supersede the MATCH function. But before you start upgrading your existing formulas, it would be wise to understand all advantages of the new function and how it differs from the old one. Continue reading
Creating a simple drop down list in Excel is easy. Making a cascading drop-down has always been a problem. But not any more! The introduction of dynamic arrays in Excel 365 provided a fast and easy solution. Continue reading
Until recently, there has been just one easy way to generate dates in Excel - the AutoFill feature. The introduction of the new dynamic array SEQUENCE function has made it possible to make a series of dates with a formula too. This tutorial takes an in-depth look at both methods so that you can choose the one that works best for you. Continue reading
The times when you had to put numbers in sequence in Excel manually are long gone. In modern Excel, you can make a simple number series in a flash with the Auto Fill feature. If you have a more specific task in mind, then use the SEQUENCE function, which is specially designed for this purpose. Continue reading
As you probably know, Microsoft Excel has several functions for generating random numbers such as RAND, RANDBETWEEN and RANDARRAY. However, there is no guarantee that their result will be duplicate free. This tutorial shows a few formulas to build your own unique random number generator for Excel. Continue reading
A while ago, we described a few different ways to randomly select in Excel. Most of those solutions rely on the RAND and RANDBETWEEN functions, which may generate duplicate numbers. If you need a random selection without duplicates, then use the approaches described in this tutorial. Continue reading
As you probably know, Microsoft Excel already has a couple of randomizing functions. What is the sense in introducing another one? In a nutshell, because it's far more powerful and can replace all of the older functions. Continue reading
Due to the revolutionary update in the Excel 365 calculation engine, array formulas become very straightforward and understandable for everyone, not just for super users. The tutorial explains what dynamic arrays are, and how they can make your worksheets more efficient. Continue reading
Microsoft Excel provides a number of ways to arrange text data alphabetically, dates chronologically, and numbers from smallest to largest. In addition to the traditional Sort functionality, Excel 365 introduces a brand-new way to sort data with formulas. Continue reading
The Sort functionality has been around for a long time. But with the introduction of dynamic arrays in Excel 365, there appeared an amazingly simple way to sort in Excel with formulas. The beauty of this method is that the results update automatically when the source data changes. Continue reading
The introduction of the FILTER function in Excel 365 has become a long-awaited alternative to the conventional methods. Unlike the Filter feature that needs to be re-applied with each data change, Excel formulas recalculate automatically, so you need to set up your filter just once! Continue reading
A couple of years ago, we discussed various ways to count unique and distinct values in Excel by using traditional array formulas. Today, we will show you a much simpler solution with the recently introduced dynamic array functions. Continue reading
In the previous versions of Excel, getting a list of unique values was a hard challenge. The introduction of the UNIQUE function in Excel 365 has changed everything! Now, you don't need to be a formula expert to get unique values from a range, based on one or multiple criteria, and sort the results in alphabetical order. Continue reading
Until recently, there were two prevalent methods to merge cell contents in Excel: the concatenation operator and CONCATENATE function. With the introduction of TEXTJOIN, it seems like a more powerful alternative has appeared, which enables you to join text in a more flexible manner including any delimiter in between. Continue reading
In some situations, you may want to know how many cells do not have anything in them. This tutorial will show you the fastest and most convenient methods to get the number of empty cells in a range as well as totally blank rows. Continue reading
In a small dataset, you can easily spot all the blanks with your own eyes. But in a huge file containing hundreds of rows, pinpointing empty cells manually is next to impossible. This tutorial will teach you four quick and easy ways to highlight blank cells in Excel so that you can visually recognize them. Continue reading
There are many situations when you need to check if a cell is empty or not. For instance, if cell is blank, then you might want to sum, count, copy a value from another cell, or do nothing. In these scenarios, ISBLANK is the right function to use. Continue reading
Whenever you need to get information about the contents of some cell in Excel, you'd typically use the so-called Information functions. Both ISTEXT and ISNONTEXT belong to this category. The ISTEXT function checks if a value is text and ISNONTEXT tests if a value is not text. Continue reading
The concept of the ISNUMBER function in Excel is very simple - it just checks whether a given value is a number or not. But the practical uses of the function go far beyond its basic concept, especially when combined with other functions within larger formulas. Continue reading
In most Office applications, starting a new paragraph is not a problem - you simply press Enter on your keyboard. In Microsoft Excel, however, this work differently - pressing the Enter key completes the entry and moves the cursor to the next cell. So, how do you create a new line in Excel? Continue reading
When looking up some information in Excel, it's a rare case when all the data is on the same sheet. More often, you will have to search across multiple sheets or even different workbooks. The good news is that Microsoft Excel provides more than one way to do this. Continue reading
When analyzing large chunks of information in Excel, you may often want to know how many cells contain specific text. This tutorial explains how to do it in a simple way. Continue reading
Initially, Excel spreadsheets were designed to work with numbers. But these days we often use them to store and manipulate text too. Want to know how many cells with text there are in your worksheet? Microsoft Excel has several functions for this. Continue reading
When searching for something in your Excel spreadsheets, most of the time you'd look up vertically in columns or horizontally in rows. But sometimes you need to look across both rows and columns. This is called a two-dimensional lookup, and this tutorial shows how to do it in 4 different ways. Continue reading
Although Microsoft Excel has special functions for vertical and horizontal lookup, expert users normally replace them with INDEX MATCH, which is superior to VLOOKUP and HLOOKUP in many ways. Among other things, it can look up two or more criteria in columns and rows. Continue reading
The tutorial introduces XLOOKUP - the new function for vertical and horizontal lookup in Excel. Left lookup, last match, Vlookup with multiple criteria and a lot more things that used to require a rocket science degree to accomplish have now become as easy as ABC. Continue reading
When it comes to finding the minimum based on conditions, there are several possible solutions. You’ll see different approaches to locate the lowest value and choose the one that suits best for you. Continue reading