Weather you are thinking about buying an insurance annuity or putting some money in a saving account, you are wondering - is that a good deal? To know it for sure, you need to find the present value of an investment. For this, Microsoft Excel provides the PV function. Continue reading
If offered a choice to receive a certain sum of money right now or defer the payment into the future, which would you choose? For most of us, taking money now is a natural instinct. In the financial world, this is explained by the time value of money concept. Continue reading
When it comes to inputting information in Excel spreadsheets, most people do it the traditional way - cell by cell, row by row. To make the process more use-friendly and less time-consuming, you can use a special data entry form. Continue reading
If you work with lengthy formulas in Excel, then you are certainly familiar with the idea of named ranges that make complex formulas easier to read. And now, Microsoft is making a step further and allows assigning names to calculations and values directly in a formula. Continue reading
Excel cells may often link to other workbooks to pull relevant information from there. When a source workbook gets deleted, relocated, or damaged, external references to that file break down and your formulas start returning errors. Obviously, to fix the formulas, you need to find broken links. Continue reading
External links, or external references, are a very common practice in Excel. After completing a particular task, however, you may want to find and probably break those links. Continue reading
The introduction of dynamic arrays has made our lives as Excel users a lot easier. Among many other things, they significantly simplify the creation of dynamic drop down lists that you can copy across multiple rows. Continue reading
Building your personal and corporate finances requires thorough planning. One of the most important factors of success is understanding how much an investment made today will grow to in the future. That is called the future value of investment, and this tutorial will teach you how to calculate it in Excel. Continue reading
If your tables have only a few dozen rows, then most likely any method will be fast enough, and you won't notice the difference. But if the number of rows in your tables is measured in thousands, the correct choice of the function is crucial - the difference in performance can be more than 10 times! Continue reading
Financial decisions are important part of business strategy and planning. In everyday life, we also have quite a lot of financial decisions to make. For such scenarios, Excel provides the RATE function that will help you calculate an interest rate for a specific period. Continue reading
While working with numeric data in Excel, you may often need to get the highest numbers based on criteria. The bad news is that the LARGEIF function does not exist in Excel. The good news is that you can easily construct your own LARGE IF formula. Continue reading
In case you want to bring focus to the highest or lowest N values in a dataset, the best way is to highlight them in different colors. This article will teach you how to do this with Excel's presets and create your own conditional formatting rule based on formula. Continue reading
Want to identify the highest or lowest values in a column or row? Need to return not only the values themselves but their names too? With this tutorial, you will learn how to find top 3, 5, 10 or n values in a dataset and retrieve matching data. Continue reading
When analyzing a set of numbers, it often makes sense to find the biggest ones. Getting the highest value is super-easy with the MAX function. When it comes to targeting a specific largest value, say the 2nd or the 3rd biggest number in a dataset, the LARGE function comes in handy. Continue reading
Trying to get a bottom value based on one or more conditions? Just use the SMALL function together with IF. This tutorial shows how to build such a formula and explains its internal logic, so that you could easily decipher the formula and adjust for your needs. Continue reading
Need to find a few lowest numbers in a worksheet? This is quite easy to do with the Excel Sort feature. Do not want to re-sort your data with every change? The SMALL function will help you quickly find the lowest value, second lowest, third lowest, and so on. Continue reading
Trying to build an IF statement with wildcard text, but it fails every time? The problem is not in your formula but in the function itself - Excel IF does not support wildcard characters. However, there is a way to get it to work for partial text match, and this tutorial will teach you how. Continue reading
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
Sometimes Excel worksheets can be difficult to read because of dense information and complex structure. Adding borders around cells can help you distinguish different sections, emphasize certain data, and make your worksheets better presentable and more attractive. 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