"Give me a formula, and I shall make it return an error," an Excel user would say. In this tutorial, we won't be looking at how to return errors in Excel, we'd rather learn how to prevent them in order to keep your worksheets clean and your formulas transparent. Continue reading
You want to put today's date in some cell? Or you wish to highlight the current date in your Excel calendar? Or you'd like to find the date closest to today? All this can be done by using the Excel TODAY function and this tutorial will teach you how. Continue reading
The Excel MOD function is designed to get the division remainder, but it can do much more than its original purpose. In this tutorial, you will find a few non-trivial uses of MOD in Excel that may prove useful in your worksheets. Continue reading
When you need to determine the relative position of a number in a list of numbers, the easiest way is to sort the numbers in ascending or descending order. If for some reason sorting is not possible, the Excel RANK function is the perfect tool to do the job. Continue reading
In yesterday's tutorial we started to look at Excel Data Validation - what its purpose is, how it works, and how to use built-in rules to validate data in your worksheets. Today, we are going to take a step further and talk about the nitty-gritty aspects of custom data validation. Continue reading
When setting up a workbook for your users, you may often want to control information input into specific cells to make sure all data entries are accurate and consistent. Among other things, you may want to allow only particular data type such as numbers or dates in a cell, or limit numbers to a certain range and text to a given length. Continue reading
Flipping data in Excel sounds like a trivial one-click task, but surprisingly there is no such inbuilt option. In this tutorial, you will find a few quick ways to flip tables vertically and horizontally preserving the original formatting and formulas. Continue reading
If you are working with a continuously changing data set, you may want to make your named range dynamic so that it automatically expands to accommodate newly added data. In this tutorial, you will find detailed step-by-step guidance on how to do this. Continue reading
Names in Excel are a paradoxical thing: being one of the most useful features, they are often considered pointless or nerdy. This tutorial will teach you different ways to create a named range in Excel to make your formulas much easier to write, read, and re-use. Continue reading
To be able to use Excel formulas efficiently, you need to understand how Microsoft Excel calculates them. Not less important are calculation settings that can speed up, slow down or even stop your Excel calculations as well as maintain their accuracy. Continue reading
When it comes to calculations, there is almost noting that Microsoft Excel cannot do, from totaling a column of numbers to solving complex linear programming problems. Apart from that, you can use Excel as a calculator to do math - add, divide, multiply, and subtract numbers as well as raise to power and find roots. Continue reading
Being primarily designed as a spreadsheet program, Microsoft Excel is extremely powerful and versatile when it comes to calculating numbers or solving math and engineering problems. This tutorial aims to teach you the essentials of Excel functions and show how to use basic formulas in Excel. Continue reading
Squaring a number and finding a square root are very common operations if mathematics. But how do you do square root in Excel? Either by using the SQRT function or by raising a number to the power of 1/2. Continue reading
When analyzing numerical data, you may often be looking for some way to find the "typical" value. For this purpose, you can use one of the so-called measures of central tendency such as arithmetic mean, median or mode. Continue reading
The median is one of the three main measures of central tendency, which is commonly used in statistics for finding the center of a data sample or population. Continue reading
By default, Microsoft Excel aligns numbers to the bottom-right of cells and text to the bottom-left. However, you can easily change the default alignment or even align a column of numbers by a decimal point or a specific character. Continue reading
Looking up a specific value within a dataset is one of the most common tasks in Excel. And yet, there exists no "universal" lookup formula suited for all situations. In this tutorial, you will find an overview of the most popular Excel Lookup functions with formula examples and in-depth tutorials linked for your reference. Continue reading
When subtracting and adding time in Excel, you may sometimes want to display the resulting time intervals over 24 hours in the hh:mm format, over 60 minutes in the mm:ss format, and over 60 seconds in the ss format. The task is a lot easier than it may sound, and you will know the solution in a moment. Continue reading
There are a handful of different ways to look up and match in Excel. This tutorial discusses the LOOKUP function that is designed to handle the simplest cases of vertical and horizontal lookup. Continue reading
There are many ways to create a hyperlink in Excel. If you plan to insert many identical or similar hyperlinks, the fastest way is to use a Hyperlink formula, which makes it easier to insert, copy and edit hyperlinks. Continue reading
When using Microsoft Excel for data analysis, you may often find yourself in situations when you need to get all matches based on a specific id, name, email address or some other unique identifier. An immediate solution that comes to mind is using the Excel VLOOKUP function, but the problem is that it can only return a single match. Continue reading
MID is one of the Text functions that Microsoft Excel provides for manipulating text strings. At the most basic level, it is used to extract a substring from the middle of the text string. The tutorial explains the specificities of the Excel MID function and shows a few creative uses to accomplish challenging tasks. Continue reading
Learn how to quickly highlight entire rows based on another cell value in Excel. Continue reading
Today our focus is on the RIGHT function, which is designed to return a specified number of characters from the rightmost side of a string. Like other Text functions, RIGHT is very simple and straightforward, nevertheless it has a few unobvious uses that might prove helpful in your work. Continue reading
The tutorial shows how to use the LEFT function in Excel to get a substring from the beginning of the text string, extract text before a certain character, force a Left formula to return a number, and more. Continue reading
The tutorial shows different ways to add leading zeros in Excel: how to keep zeros as you type, show leading zeros in cells, remove or hide zeros. Continue reading
Microsoft Excel is all about numbers, and in your worksheets, you are likely to deal with numbers most of the time. However, there are situations when you do need to convert numbers to text, and it is where the TEXT function steps in. Continue reading
There exist many different Excel lookup functions for finding a certain value in a range of cells, and MATCH is one of them. Basically, it identifies a relative position of an item in a range of cells, however, the Excel MATCH function can do much more than its pure essence. Continue reading
The tutorial explains the specificities of the Excel Hlookup function and how to use it most efficiently. Among other things, you will learn Hlookup formulas to search with approximate and exact match, from another sheet and workbook, case-sensitive horizontal lookup, and more. Continue reading
If someone asks you what Excel function you use most often, what would your answer be? In most cases, it's the Excel IF function. A regular If formula is very straightforward and easy to write. But what if your data requires more elaborate logical tests with multiple conditions? Continue reading