When working with long strings, you may often want to extract a specific part of them for closer examination. In Microsoft Excel and Google Sheets, there are several ways to get text between two characters or substrings. In this article, we'll discuss the fastest and most effective ones. Continue reading
When working with complex datasets in Excel, you may often find yourself in a situation when you need to extract data to the right of a certain character or word. This tutorial will show you the fastest way by using the span-new TEXTAFTER function. Continue reading
In earlier Excel versions, extracting text before a space, comma or any other character was quite tricky. In Excel 365 and Excel for the web, we now have a brand-new TEXTBEFORE function that does the magic! Continue reading
For large datasets, you may often need to calculate a total amount for a given range between two numbers. This can be easily done with the SUMIFS function both in Excel and Google Sheets. Continue reading
The SUMIF and SUMIFS functions available in Microsoft Excel and Google Sheets are case-insensitive by nature. To conditionally sum cells treating lowercase and uppercase letters as different characters, you'll have to come up with something else. Continue reading
If you feel overwhelmed or confused about the extensive content of your worksheet, you can organize the columns in groups to easily hide and show different parts of your sheet, so that only the relevant information is visible. Continue reading
In some situations, you may need to sum specific numbers in a range, say top 3, 5, 10 or n. That might be a challenge because Excel has no inbuilt function for this. But as always, there is nothing that would prevent you from constructing your own formulas :) Continue reading
Doing a conditional sum in Excel is a piece of cake as long as all the values to be totaled are in one column. Summing multiple columns is a problem because both the SUMIF and SUMIFS functions require the sum range and criteria ranges to be equally sized. Continue reading
Microsoft Excel has a number of inbuilt features to create graphs. Regrettably, a heat map is not on board. Luckily, there is a quick and simple way to create a heat map in Excel with conditional formatting. Continue reading
When building complex formulas in Excel, you may sometimes need to get a column letter of a specific cell or from a given number. This can be done in two ways: by using inbuilt functions or your own one. Continue reading
VLOOKUP is one of the most confusing Excel functions plagued with many issues. Using VLOOKUP with ISERROR can help you catch all possible errors and handle them in a way most appropriate to your situation. Continue reading
When you write a formula that Excel does not understand or cannot calculate, it draws your attention to the problem by showing an error message. The ISERROR function can help you catch errors and provide an alternative when an error is found. Continue reading
When working with large datasets, it can be helpful to see a few areas of the same worksheet at a time to compare different subsets of data. This can be done by using Excel's Split Screen feature. Continue reading
Having spreadsheets in two different windows makes many Excel tasks easier. One of the possible solutions is viewing workbooks side by side, but this eats a lot of space and isn't always the best option. Continue reading
Getting a lot of #N/A errors in your worksheets and are curious to know if there is a way to replace them with a user-friendly message? IFNA formula is the solution you need. Continue reading
The tutorial talks about how to return a column number in Excel using formulas and how to number columns automatically. Continue reading
When Excel cannot find what it is asked for, a #N/A! error appears in a cell. To intercept and handle such errors, you can use the ISNA function. Continue reading
Imagine this: you want to export your Excel data to another application. Whatever CSV option you use, the result is a semicolon-separated file instead of comma-separated you really wanted. The setting is default, and you have no idea how to change it. Continue reading
When viewing a large worksheet for a long time, you may eventually lose track of where your cursor is and which data you are looking at. To know exactly where you are at any moment, get Excel to automatically highlight the active row and column for you! Continue reading
When you have data in two different lists, you may often need to compare them to see what information is missing in one of the lists or what data is present in both. Comparison can be done in many different ways, which method to use depends on exactly what you want from it. Continue reading
Today we’ll continue exploring custom Excel functions. Now that you know how to create UDFs, let’s dig a bit deeper and learn how to use and store user-defined functions in Excel. Continue reading
At first sight, Excel has everything you could ever need for text string manipulations. Hmm… what about regular expressions? Oops, there are no built-in Regex functions in Excel. But no one says we cannot create our own ones :) Continue reading
As you already know how to create UDFs (and, I hope, you’ve also tried applying them in your Excel), let’s dig a bit deeper and see what can be done in case your user defined function is not working. Continue reading
Whichever input data you are using, you'll hardly encounter a dataset without spaces. In most cases, whitespace is good. In some situations, however, it may become evil - extra spaces can mess up your formulas and make your worksheets almost unmanageable. Continue reading
This article will help you understand the differences between UDF and Macro. Also, custom functions have many advantages, but there are also many limitations when using them. Continue reading
Microsoft Excel provides a number of functions to extract text from cells. Those functions can cope with most of string extraction challenges in your worksheets. Most, but not all. When the Text functions stumble, regular expressions come to rescue. Continue reading
This article shows how to add a help text to UDF and explains why these functions are not recalculated. You will see the differences between volatile and non-volatile custom functions. Continue reading
The name CSV (comma separated values) implies the use of comma to separate data fields. But that is in theory. In practice, many so-called CSV files separate data using other characters such as semicolon or tabs. The lack of standard spawns various problems with CSV to Excel conversions. Continue reading
This article will introduce you to user defined functions in Excel. You’ll see different variants of user defined functions and learn how to create and apply them. Continue reading
If you often export files in the CSV format from different applications, you may end up having a bunch of individual files relating to the same subject matter. The question is - is there a simple way to import them all into a single Excel workbook? Continue reading
