Focusing on content

Excel has recently gained several new features that make it easier to focus on the content, i.e. the tables we work with. First, the menu with color palettes is now much larger and more noticeable, and the choice of colors is more adapted to visually impaired people or those who do not perceive the differences between colors well. Then there is a new option that allows you to focus on the cell, making it easier to work with large tables.

Excel and Microsoft Forms service

Everyone knows that at the end of the year I often post “recipes” that have something to do with the Christmas and New Year holidays. This time I decided to show you how to combine Excel and Microsoft Forms, a Microsoft 365 service used to create questionnaires, quizzes, polls… In this text, you will find out how to create a New Year’s questionnaire by creating a form directly from Excel.

Function PIVOTBY

Pivot tables have been with us for a long time and allow us to easily analyze data by changing the perspective from which we look at them. Recently, there is also a PIVOTBY function that allows us to get a similar report, but in an Excel spreadsheet. By marking rows, columns, values ​​and other parameters, a dynamic report is generated. Here’s a post about how to use this function…

Function GROUPBY

If writing SQL queries is in your job description I am certain that you, in great extent, inside SELECT command, use a GROUP BY clause that allows you to group row values by a given column and then apply an aggregation function, e.g. SUM, COUNT, AVERAGE, MIN, MAX… I have good news for you: we can achieve almost the same thing within an Excel report by using the GROUPBY function…

Python in Excel documents

Python has finally become part of Excel, and from now on you can add pieces of Python code to a sheet to define datasets, process and visualize them. If you have a Microsoft 365 subscription and have downloaded update 2409 (Build 17628.20164), you will be able to use Python normally (no longer reserved for testers only). In this short intro you will learn what Python is and how it can enrich your reports.