How to Create Cycle Plots in Excel to Chart Seasonal Sales Data
If your company's sales are seasonable, you've probably seen a chart that looks something like the first one below.
This Excel chart shows the continuous...
Here’s How Inflation Could Affect the Value of Your Home
November 5, 2021
Inflation is rising in the U.S. And that made me wonder how a higher rate of inflation could affect the price of...
Simple Transformations Can Reveal Hidden Patterns in Your Data
Excel users have at least two significant advantages over business professionals who rely on other analytical and reporting tools.
First advantage: We Excel users can...
How to Use Excel Formulas to Calculate a Term-Loan Amortization Schedule
"How do I calculate cumulative principal and interest for term loans? I have scoured the web for a function that will perform this task,...
Why INDEX-MATCH Is Far Better Than VLOOKUP or HLOOKUP in Excel
(Download the workbook.)
Excel’s VLOOKUP function is more popular than the INDEX-MATCH function combination, probably because when Excel users need to look up data then a "lookup" function...
How to Use Array Formulas to Report Groups of Accounts
Often, in accounting, marketing, and other departments, we'd like to report and analyze groups of items rather than one item at a time.
In Part...
How to Use Excel’s LET Function
In the summer of 2020, Microsoft introduced the LET function for Excel 365—one of the most-significant new worksheet functions that Microsoft has introduced in...
How to Set Up an Automatic Error-Checking System in Excel Reports
Decades ago, I worked as a cost accountant for a large company. But because our department received terrible reports, I wrote my own reports...using...
Fun with XY (Scatter) Charts in Excel
Because I’d been working hard on a project for many months, I once decided to take a break and play around with XY charts…which...
How to Work with Dates Before 1900 in Excel
(Download the workbook.)
If you work with dates prior to the year 1900, Excel's standard date-handling system will be no help. However, there are several...
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Getting Radical with Excel
It's time to think about Excel in a radical new way—when we use it to work with business or economic data.
It's time, in fact,...
How Fast Is Too Fast?
(Originally published in Inc Magazine.)
What typically tops the list of worries of the chief executive officers of fast growing companies? Financing that growth, according...
How to Smooth Data by Using the TREND Function
Years ago, I read that Prof. William S. Cleveland had suggested that data could be smoothed by calculating a centered trendline through adjacent data—a...
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