The Game of Life

The Game of Life is an old programmer’s puzzle that teaches teenagers to write and analyse their own code. The goal of the game is to simulate the development (life and death) of cells within one organism. An organism is a matrix of arbitrary size, and the rules are as follows: if a cell is alive and surrounded by 2 or 3 living cells, it will survive. If there is an empty position and is surrounded by 3 living cells, a new cell will be born. How to create this simulation in Excel?

Simple sales analysis

By combining INDEX and MATCH, we can easily calculate sales results if the data we analyse is given in a table that is a matrix. By using Data Validation for certain cells you’ll get a very simple sales analysis tool that is easily scalable and can be used in more complex scenarios. Pivot tables are an irreplaceable tool but there are situations where we get similar results by a different procedure, this is one of them!

Stop If True option

When defining conditional formatting rules, sometimes there are more than one format, and we want one formatting rule to exclude another. In these situations, Stop If True option may be helpful. It is used in various ways, and one of the simplest is filtering the conditional formatting rules given by icon sets. Let’s see how this works!

Data categories

Last year brought us another interesting Power BI Desktop feature. When importing tables into a data model, it is possible to specify a data category for the selected columns. Choosing a category can accurately determine what data is in the table. This way we get some new features, e.g. to include a link to a site or an image describing the products within the table.

Updated ribbons

Power BI Desktop got updated ribbons! The new, modern design, simplifies operation significantly because options are better grouped and easier to find. It is very similar to the one we encountered in Office365 applications and appeared as one of the preview features in November 2019. From April 2020, this should become the default look of the Power BI Desktop development environment, let’s see what new it brings.