Sometimes life is stranger than fiction. If we were to create this requirement as a hypothetical case many would say that it would never happen. Well, this was a real question that someone had for me. Read this post to see the requirements and how I solved this. I’ve also included alternative solutions from the Excel community. Continue reading
Recently I saw a link about the World Happiness Report. What is it? “…a landmark survey of the state of global happiness …which ranks 155 countries by their happiness levels” Can you guess what my first question was? Continue reading
We have a bunch of names in a column. We need to create a unique and alphabetically sorted list. BE CAREFUL! Before we jump into a solution we should ask a couple of key questions. Does the solution need to be dynamic? Do we need to teach the solution to our co-worker or client? Continue reading
There are many factors to consider when creating a solution in Excel. Are we building the solution for someone else with basic Excel skills? Should we use a complex formula in only one column to save space or use helper formulas to simplify the solution? Let’s take a look at this question from Mike Girvin’s ExcelIsFun YouTube channel. Continue reading
In the movie Forrest Gump I’m sure you remember when Bubba lists different ways to prepare shrimp: “You can barbecue it, boil it, broil it, bake it, saute it. Dey’s uh, shrimp-kabobs, shrimp creole, shrimp gumbo. Pan fried, deep fried, stir-fried. There’s pineapple shrimp, lemon shrimp, coconut shrimp, pepper shrimp, shrimp soup, shrimp stew, shrimp salad, shrimp and potatoes, shrimp burger, shrimp sandwich. That- that’s about it.“ Continue reading
Oz du Soleil and I have been trading Excel ideas for a couple of years now. During ModelOff’s Global Training Camp in Toronto (Sept 22&23) I met Oz in person! Oz flew in from Oregon to deliver one of the Excel sessions. At one point Oz asked the following question: “Given a list of 10 names, how can Excel display all the name pairs?” Continue reading
I recently presented at ModelOff’s Global Training Camp in Toronto. One of the many great things about the training camp was that I had the pleasure of meeting Excel guru Liam Bastick. Continue reading
Such a clear question originating from the classic: “How many unique items per group“? Continue reading
This post from Tom Urtis reminded me of a crazy Excel puzzle I once solved. The concept was similar except for one tiny twist! First of all, let’s review the original puzzle from Tom: Continue reading
Who knows what could happen in the future but for now humans using software cleanup and analyze data (not nerdy robots!). This post reviews examples of awkwardly twisted data that require transposing, rotating, repeating, etc before it can be properly analyzed.