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Skip Dates in Excel Chart Axis

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set Excel axis to skip weekend datesIn this tutorial we’re going to look at how we can skip dates in the Excel chart axis for those dates that have no data. Download the Excel Workbook. Note: this is a .xlsx file please ensure your browser doesn’t change the file extension on download. When you plot data in a chart that has […]

Excel Custom AutoFilter with Wildcards

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Excel AutoFilterExcel’s Custom AutoFilter can perform a myriad of tasks that are often overlooked. Just last week we had a question from Alf: “I have a list of 7000+ words and want to search it with variables such as find all words where the third character is “u”, or where the third character is “u” and […]

Excel Custom Chart Labels

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Excel custom chart labelsUsing Excel custom chart labels is a great way to create a more insightful chart without having to show a whole other series. Just take this chart below with custom labels showing the year on year % change: Download the Excel Workbook. Note: this is a .xlsx file please ensure your browser doesn’t change the […]

Excel Find Tool

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excel_find_tool_thumbYou’ll be Amazed at what you can CTRL+F in Excel Excel’s Find tool is one of the first features you’re likely to learn and for many of us we only use its most basic feature, which is to find a particular word or value in a cell. It is such a diverse tool that I […]

Excel Advent Calendar

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Excel Advent CalendarToday I’ve got a Christmas treat for you with an Excel Advent Calendar that Phil and I created. Before you get too excited I should say that there aren’t any chocolate/candy treats behind each door, plus you have to do a bit of work to actually open the doors! Don’t worry, I’m not the Grinch… […]

Workbook & Worksheet Events in Excel VBA

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Workbook & Worksheet Events in Excel VBAWhat Are Events? An Event occurs when certain actions are performed by the user or VBA. For example when you open a workbook the Workbook_Open event is triggered. When you (or your VBA) saves a workbook, the Workbook_BeforeSave event is triggered. These events are built into Excel VBA and are executed automatically by Excel. You […]

My 2014 Microsoft MVP Summit Experience

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mvp_logoI arrived back from the 2014 Microsoft MVP Summit in Seattle on Sunday a little tired but bounding with excitement for the future of Excel. It was wonderful to meet my Excel Idols – the other Excel MVP’s and wax lyrical about Excel and other geeky topics. Microsoft took great care to make sure the […]

What the CELL!

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Excel CELL FunctionExcel’s CELL function doesn’t get a lot of press but it can be handy to know. The CELL Function simply returns information about the formatting, contents or location of a cell. Let’s look at an example: In cell A5 I have a date and in C5 I have my CELL formula =CELL(“format”,A5). The result returned […]

Excel GETPIVOTDATA Function

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getpivotdata functionIn its simplest form Excel’s GETPIVOTDATA function enables you to extract values from a PivotTable report, but if you’re like me when you first came across the GETPIVOTDATA function you were less than pleased with the results. Understandably so, because in it’s default form it’s quite inflexible. However, the benefit in using GETPIVOTDATA, as opposed […]

Excel Chart Makeover

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Chart MakeoverGetting the formatting in your chart right can make the difference between clear, concise information and just a pretty picture. Take a look at this stacked column chart using some of the built in Excel chart formats: What’s your initial reaction? Here are some of mine: Striking use of colour It looks nice But then […]