Everyday we come across some problem for which we try, research for hours and once solved, looks so easy in MS Excel.I like to keep a note of it and share with others, so people can use them.These notes are not necessarily my own writing but are the one which I came accross during my research over the net to find out solutions.
Thursday, March 31, 2005
MS Excel: Close all Open Workbooks
Follow this:
Press Shift key on the keyboard while clicking File on the menu;
And now you will see the option: Close All
Click on it and all the workbooks are closed unless, in some workbook(s), you have made changes and not saved them.Excel will prompt you to save changes and close the workbooks.
Wednesday, March 30, 2005
MS Excel: Not only sort data in a column but also in the rows
Select Sort from the Data menu.
In the Sort dialog box, click on the Options.
In the Sort Options dialog box, click on Sort Left to Right, then click OK.
Back in the Sort dialog box, go to the Sort By combo box and select a row to sort, and also select the direction (ascending or descending).
You can select additional rows by going to the boxes.
Click OK.
Yu Hooo!!! Excel sorts the row horizontally.
Tuesday, March 29, 2005
MS Excel: Get Summary Calculations on the Fly
While looking at the spreadsheet, you can do the following to improve your analysis capabilities or effectively respond to one off questions which keeps coming up during meetings:
1. From the menu option, select View, and check the status bar.
2. This action will start showing you status bar at the bottom of spreadsheet.
3. Select the range of data you wish to analyze, and you will see on the status bar, Sum= 100 or whatever is the sum of the range selected (By default, excel is set to show Sum).
4. Right click on status bar, and you will see options like Average, Count, Count Nums, Max, Min and Sum. Select any one and see the result on status bar.
Monday, March 28, 2005
MS Excel: Sum of a column with #DIV/0! Or any other error message in some cells
My friend recently requested me to suggest some quick fix for sum of a column which has few cells containing #DIV/0! Or any other error message. Doing the sum function produces error because sum neither ignores those cells nor understands it.
My process to deal with this problem is:
1.Insert a column next to the column you are trying to sum up.
2.In my example, the first cell is A3, I inserted column B.
3.In Cell B3, I wrote the formula “=IF (ISERROR (A3), 0,A3)”
4.This formula looks for the cell value and if it is an error, converts it to 0.
5.Then I copied this formula in B4 to B6 since my values were in up to cell B6, you could copy it till last cell value.
6.Select Cells B3 to B6, copy and paste special-values only.
7.Now you can sum this column and you are done.
Example:
Formulas:
Values:
Saturday, March 26, 2005
MS Excel and VBA: Transposing Data
This tip is submitted by Anupam Srivastava:
Transposing Data from Column to Row with a feature to start a New Row for each New Record which is identified by an empty Row:
The original dataset was stored in the same column followed by an empty row before each new group entry. The task was to bring each dataset into row format to make data analysis job easier. This is particularly useful for comparing information.
This Macro scans through the column, copies each item and paste it into different columns in the same row and begins a new row for each empty row it finds. The datasets are differentiated by empty row before new dataset begins.
To maintain consistency with the generated table, it is wise to make sure that each new dataset has the same number of data entities (items).
For users with knowledge of DB, if we consider each group to be an attribute with x number of entities, then each new attribute that you add to the original data should consist x entities to make sure that the final table gets populated in a uniform fashion.
For this Macro it is assumed that each dataset consists of 7 entities
Sub DataTranspose()
‘ Declare variable to denote column and row assignment
' Row Variable
Dim i As Integer
' Column Variable
Dim j As Integer
i = 2
j = 1
' Sheet has 218 rows of data
For i = 1 To 218
Range("A" & i).Select
Selection.Copy
Range("a" & j).Select
ActiveSheet.Paste
' Increment Row Counter to read next row
i = i + 1
Range("A" & i).Select
Selection.Copy
' Transposing Row Entry to Column
Range("B" & j).Select
ActiveSheet.Paste
i = i + 1
Range("A" & i).Select
Selection.Copy
Range("C" & j).Select
ActiveSheet.Paste
i = i + 1
Range("A" & i).Select
Selection.Copy
Range("D" & j).Select
ActiveSheet.Paste
i = i + 1
Range("A" & i).Select
Selection.Copy
Range("E" & j).Select
ActiveSheet.Paste
i = i + 1
Range("A" & i).Select
Selection.Copy
Range("F" & j).Select
ActiveSheet.Paste
i = i + 1
Range("A" & i).Select
Selection.Copy
Range("G" & j).Select
ActiveSheet.Paste
i = i + 1
Range("A" & i).Select
Selection.Copy
Range("H" & j).Select
ActiveSheet.Paste
i = i + 1
Range("A" & i).Select
Selection.Copy
Range("I" & j).Select
ActiveSheet.Paste
i = i + 1
j = j + 1
Next
End Sub
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Anupam Srivastava is B.Sc. (Computer Engineering) from Queen’s University, Kingston, Canada.
Friday, March 25, 2005
MS Excel: Always show full menu
MS Excel only shows you frequently used menu under each tab and then, if you wish to use something other than shown in the menu, you have to go to that expand sign to see full menu:
This is frustrating, especially when you are learning. How are you suppose to know, what is hidden under that magic expand sign. I always prefer to keep full menu on.
To do this, it is a very simple two step process:
Step 1: Go to Tools, find out Customize and click:
Now, you will see something like this:
Step 2: Click on Options tab and select, always show full menus, close and you are done.
Now, every time you click on a menu, you will see full menu. Remember, by doing this on MS Excel, your all other MS Office programs like MS Words etc. will also show full menu items and it is not possible to avoid this. But who cares, it is always good to keep full menu in view irrespective of program you are using.
Thursday, March 24, 2005
MS Excel : The Leading Zeros
Excel automatically sees the data as a number and leading zeros have no value in numbers, so it gets rid of them.
It is helpful when you're actually dealing with numbers, but irritating when it's a Item number or Employee number.
There is a quick way to get Excel to leave your zeros alone. Justchange the cell format to text. There are couple of ways to make this change—
1. Highlight the cells to change.
Then go to the Format menu, Cells choice. (Ctrl + 1 works too.)
On the General tab choose Text from the Categories list.
Click OK.
The leading zeros are there.
2.If you only have a few cells to change you could just type an apostrophe before entering the data (ie. instead of typing 01122 in the cell type '011122).
When you hit the Enter key the change is made instantly, for that cell only, and again your zero is there.
Monday, March 21, 2005
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