Do you want to become a Microsoft Excel master? The first step might be to convince yourself that it’s possible (it is!). Then, you need some good material and determination! Continue reading
Becoming a Microsoft Excel master!
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Stand-up comedy about Spreadsheets
Stand-up mathematician Matt Parker did a comedy routine about spreadsheets. Hmm….why not create a post about this? How can I make it interesting? My quest to find an interesting angle led me to….well…creating a YouTube Transcript spreadsheeet! Continue reading
Game Review: The Worksheet Saga
On Christmas day, when no one was looking, I peeked at twitter and saw a tweet about an Excel based game called The Worksheet Saga. My first thought was “oh…it’s based on VBA. I wonder if the code is unlocked?”. Read more to see how this game works and how I hacked it to win 🙂 Continue reading
Who is the blame for Subway Delays?
Subway riders cringe when a delay is announced. Emotions range from mild annoyance to outbursts of anger. Delays inconvenience us and reduce productivity. By default we blame subway management (TTC in Toronto). Is this fair? Wouldn’t it be nice if we had data to determine what causes the delays? Continue reading
Compare Text Fonts in Excel using VBA
Have you ever had the experience where one event causes you to remember something from years ago? This happened to me today while reading the New Yorker magazine. What does Lucas de Groot, a Dutch typeface designer, have to do with Excel’s VBA language? What is “Fontgate”? Well…read on and I’ll tell you! Continue reading
Toronto Indoor Ice Rinks
I stumbled across this interesting data-set that lists Toronto’s indoor ice rinks. I thought that it would be fun to visualize the rink locations so I used Excel’s 3D Map feature. Continue reading
Video 00164 Excel Magic Trick 1452 Max Monthly Customer
Customers can make multiple purchases per month. What is the maximum amount that a customer has spent in a single month? This was a video from the amazing Mike Girvin (Excelisfun). The question is clear, but how did Mike solve it? How would you solve it? Continue reading
Video 00165 Show Column Header for Matrix Value
Last week I saw an interesting Excel puzzle from Leila Gharani on YouTube. Leila solved it using a sumproduct function. I made a video showing different solutions. Wasif Mustafa sent me his 3 helper column solution. Then Oz du Soleil created a video showing two solutions. So many ways to solve it! Continue reading
2016 Rio Olympics Women’s Marathon
One of the highlights of my life was travelling to the 2016 summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro to watch my sister, Krista DuChene, run in the women’s marathon. Her story is inspirational. Krista fractured her leg on April 28, 2014 during a half marathon and then in August of 2015 she broke a bone in her foot only one year before the Olympics.
I SEE “XLFN” !?!? WHAT IS HAPPENING?
Despite how amazing Excel is there are times when you’ll find yourself shaking with fear! For example, have you ever seen anything as scary as this =ISERROR(FIND(_xlfn.CONCAT($A2:$E2),_xlfn.CONCAT($I$2:$M$6))) What is xlfn ??? Continue reading