Following demonstration video shows how to filter data according to text content. In this example case we have list of countries and their populations. The list contains independent countries and dependent territories with country it belongs to in parenthesis. We can show only independent countries by filtering “country name”-column with criteria “show only cells not containing parenthesis” and with the opposite logic show only dependent territories. The video will clarify this:
Tag Archives: How to
Excel Filter: How to filter number columns efficiently
Following example video demonstrates how to use Excel’s Filter-feature to analyse data of the large tables – in this case population of countries. You can easily filter e.g.
- Top 10 list
- Bottom 10 list
- Above average list
- Below average list
- Countries with population between 5 and 10 million people
- etc…
How to use Excel’s Freeze Panes -feature
It is sometimes annoying when scrolling in big Excel table because you may not know what data the current row or column should contain. E.g. when each row represents one person’s data, it is difficult to analyse data if you have scrolled so that you cannot see the name column and don’t know to who current row belongs and what is the title of the current column.
Excel has (of course :-)) a solution for this. It is a feature called Freeze Panes and with it you can make selected topmost rows and leftmost columns always visible.
Following example video demonstrates the feature:
Excel VBA macro example: How to count concurrent times
Here is an example VBA macro for solving a call log analysis problem:
We have call log
- Column A: Date of the call
- Column B: Time of the call
- Column C: Duration of the call
How many concurrent calls?
Following screen capture demonstrates the situation:
To solve the problem I implemented Visual Basic macro ConcurrentCalls() and helper functions max(), min() and isConcurrent(). Here is the code:
Function max(a, b) If a > b Then max = a Else max = b End If End Function Function min(a, b) If a > b Then min = b Else min = a End If End Function Function isConcurrent(start1, end1, start2, end2) If max(start1, start2) <= min(end1, end2) Then isConcurrent = True Els isConcurrent = False End If End Function Function ConcurrentCalls() maxconcurrent = 1 r1 = 2 Do concurrent = 1 r2 = 2 Do start1 = Cells(r1, 1).Value + Cells(r1, 2).Value end1 = start1 + Cells(r1, 3).Value start2 = Cells(r2, 1).Value + Cells(r2, 2).Value end2 = start2 + Cells(r2, 3).Value If r1 <> r2 And isConcurrent(start1, end1, start2, end2) Then concurrent = concurrent + 1 End If r2 = r2 + 1 Loop Until Cells(r2, 1) = "" maxconcurrent = max(maxconcurrent, concurrent) Loop Until Cells(r1, 1) <> "" ConcurrentCalls = maxconcurrent End Function
Feel free to examine and let me know if you see a bug or can imagine a better solution!
Check also 101 Excel Secrets and Everyday Excel video course.
Excel Conditional Formatting: How to highlight cells based on age
Following Excel Conditional Formatting example demonstrates how to highlight cells with dates older than 1 year, 4 years, 8 years and 12 years with different colours:
Excel VBA Macro: How to use InputBox
Following example video demonstrates how to use Input Box dialog from the Excel VBA Macro code. In this example input type is Range-object. Example code asks user to select cells and then fills those cells with text “Foo”.
How to customise Excel table’s look and feel
There are numerous ways you can customise how your Excel table looks. Yo can e.g.
- Change the font color or cell’s fill color
- Make texts bold, italic, etc.
- Draw different kinds of borders around your cells
- Align cell’s texts different ways
- Merge cells to make it easier to align texts the way you like
- Adjust column widths and cell heights
- Hide Excel’s gridlines
- …and much more…
- Windows: ctrl + 1
- Mac: cmd + 1
Following demonstration video shows some of these techniques to format a table:
How to use Excel’s VLOOKUP-function
VLOOKUP-function is a great help when you need to find data from the large tables. With VLOOKUP you can search for a value in the first column of the table and return a value in the same row from the column you specify. VLOOKUP has three mandatory parameters and one optional parameter:
- parameter: Value to search in the first column
- parameter: Table to search from
- parameter: Index of the column from which the matching value must be returned. The index of the first column is 1
- optional parameter: If omitted or TRUE, an exact or approximate match is returned. If an exact match is not found, the next largest value that is less than lookup_value is returned. If FALSE, VLOOKUP will only find an exact match.
Excel VBA macros: How to add button to worksheet
In my previous blog post I launched Excel VBA macro from Ribbon bar’s Developer tab (Macros). More user friendly way is to add push button for macro directly to worksheet. Following video demonstrates how to do it:
Excel VBA macros: How to record a VBA macro
It is a good idea to automatise time consuming routine tasks in Excel. You don’t need to know how to implement VBA macros, because you can just record your tasks. In following example I record a macro that assumes that I have people’s whole names listed in column A and want to split names (first name and last name) into columns A anB. This is good example when simple recorded macro can save you from doing this routine task all over again.
Here is a video that demonstrates the VBA macro recording and shows how to run the macro: