Excel 2016

Concatenate(): Your $10 Excel Function of the Day

Learn how to use the concatenate() function in Excel

You may have already read my previous post on how to string text together in Excel. That technique has been around forever, but it is so… 1995. Modern Excel users know that there is a very powerful function built into Excel that makes stringing text together as simple as 1-2-3. Before we get started, let’s… Keep Reading

Stringing Text Together in Microsoft Excel

I showed you how to break text in one column into multiple columns using the Text to Columns tool in a previous Tip, but today I’m going to show you how to string text together. In other words, same problem, just going in a different direction. You can’t add words together… As you can see,… Keep Reading

Text to Columns in Microsoft Excel

The need to break one column into multiple columns is one that every Excel user needs upon occasion. In the accompanying example, you can see that both the first and the last names are combined into one column. If I was handed this worksheet, the first thing I would want to do is break the… Keep Reading

Why things don’t always add up in Excel

Number formatting is a great way to change the appearance of a number, including the number of decimal places of accuracy, but it can also yield some strange results. If you’ve ever had the experience of puzzling over a column of numbers that AutoSum can’t seem to add up, or perhaps you’ve got percentages of… Keep Reading

The More Button in Microsoft Office

There are a lot of “hidden secrets” in Microsoft Office that are actually sitting there right out in the open. A little bit of curiosity will go a long way toward making you into a Microsoft Power User. One of my favorites is the More button. The More button is ubiquitous throughout Microsoft Office, and… Keep Reading

Asking Users for Data using a VBA Input Box

If you are getting started working with Macros in Microsoft Office, there will be plenty of times when you want to ask a user for information. An Excel purchase log might ask how many widgets were ordered, or a Word time card might ask for a user’s name. Whatever information you want to request, the… Keep Reading

Excel: Fill Right and Fill Down Keyboard Shortcuts

There are several ways that Excel can help you with formulas and functions, and a great one is the Fill Down and the Fill Right commands. Essentially, if you’ve gotten the formula correct one time, let Excel do the work for you of copy and pasting it into the other cells. The technique is really… Keep Reading

The Go-To Keyboard Shortcut: Jumping Around in Excel and Word

There are several great tools that will help you jump around in Excel and Word without having to use the mouse. These tools are called Command Shortcuts by Microsoft, but most everyone else knows them as Keyboard Shortcuts. The key to using shortcuts is to be willing to experiment! If you want to do something… Keep Reading

Excel 2016 offers Business Intelligence… built in

Waterfall Chart

New chart types in Office 2016 Charts are critical for visualizing data, and Office 2016 promises you three news to look at your information. Microsoft promises that they are “particularly good for visualizing financial or hierarchal information and for revealing statistical properties in your data.” Financial: Waterfall Statistical: Histogram, Pareto, Box and Whisker Hierarchical: Treemap… Keep Reading