Spreadsheet Roundup 2021-02-17

by Debra · Published February 17, 2021 · Updated February 14, 2021

Here is a Winter 2021 roundup of spreadsheet articles that I’ve read recently. You’ll find interesting tips, and new ideas for your own spreadsheets.

For Excel tips and tutorials, visit my Contextures website.

Data and Dashboards

Clean Your Data — The worst part of working with data is cleaning it up. To help save time, use these data cleanup techniques, from the Investintech blog.

Dashboard Tips — There are lots of great tips and examples in this Dashboard Design Essentials article by Spencer Baucke

In the News

Personal Finance – See how couples use spreadsheets to manage their cash, and try to spot potential problems.

Online Spreadsheets – Recent updates to Google Sheets and the online version of Excel should make your work a bit easier.

Spreadsheet Problems – Edward Hearn says companies need to take their spreadsheets more seriously, to avoid problems. Fancy technical solutions won’t get rid of bad data.

Functions

XLOOKUP: Have you tried Excel’s new XLOOKUP function yet? Chandoo has 13 examples that show you how XLOOKUP works.

Spill Functions: Thanks to Dermot Balson, who sent me his Excel workbook with examples for all the new functions (dynamic arrays) in Excel for Office 365. To get the sample file, go to the Excel Spill Functions page on my Contextures site.

Spreadsheet Resources

Spreadsheets – The Essential Spreadsheets guide, on the University of York site, shows how to do things in Excel and Google Sheets, with written steps, videos and sample files. It’s interesting to see the comparisons!

Excel Tips — Watch Excelling in Excel, a mini course from the University of Edinburgh. There 3 videos – data organization, tips and tricks, data visualisation

Spreadsheet Tweets

Finally, here are a few recent spreadsheet tweets, for a bit of humour.

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Is it weird that I don’t remember what a pivot table is for? I used to have a literal certification in Excel.

— Norman the PhDM (@metadoxy) February 14, 2021

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I got ribbed the other day at work for circulating a spreadsheet with a large font. Kids.

— Matt Van Tassel (@MattVanTassel) February 13, 2021

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I’m at the “build an effigy of MS Excel” stage of a pivottable. I have a column of *only* times. The Pivot table returns months and quarters. WHY

— Evan Beaver (@evcricket) February 13, 2021

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When you’ve got ADD, are a spreadsheet nerd, and need to buy a new work laptop. pic.twitter.com/t6HJm2AeGz

— brujabasura (@LaBrujaBasura) February 14, 2021

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