ADVANCE EXCEL 2007

Above is the snapshot of how the Excel environment in 2007 version looks like. Any user of traditional excel will be surprised at the first sight seeing the drastic change. There are no more menu bars in the latest version. It has been replaced by a Ribbon which contains command groups. To add on that it has a start button similar to the file menu of the earlier version and a new bar called the Quick Access Toolbar.

Let’s take a closer look at each option as we move ahead. So let’s explore the new Start Button on the top left of the application.

START BUTTON:

The start button in Excel 2007 is similar to the Excel 2003 File Menu. All the basic commands like file open, save, save-as, print... and others are available in the start button.

Home Tab:

In the home tab every command group contains a group of special functions. Like clipboard group contains functions to copy and paste, font group contains the functions you can use to edit the look of fonts and so on....

Though you can apply font styles and changes using the available functions on ribbon but you can use the format box to use the exhaustive list of options. To get the format box use CTRL+1 and you get the below box.

{Anyone who stops learning is old, whether at twenty or eighty-Henry Ford.}

Ribbon Tabs

Command Group

Quick Access Toolbar

Formula Bar

Address Bar

Start Button

Conditional formatting: It helps to highlight interesting cells or ranges of cells, emphasize unusual values, and visualize data by using data bars, colour scales, and icon sets.

Conditional formatting helps to answer these questions by making it easy to highlight interesting cells or ranges of cells, emphasize unusual values, and visualize data by using data bars, colour scales, and icon sets.

From the conditional formatting dropdown use any of the predefined option and give a value and choose the formatting option.

For ex: From the below data let’s try to highlight those cells which have sales more than 19000.

Choose the first option from conditional formatting which says “GREATER THAN” and give a value 19000 and choose any of the formatting options and see the difference. Explore other features of conditional formatting from the same menu.

Format Menu: To have more control over formatting check the format box by clicking CTRL+1 after selecting a cell.

Now you can select the different tabs like number, alignment, font, fill, border and protection.

Fill Series:

Many situations come around when you need to insert serial numbers in column A and sometimes this requirement runs down to an extent of 40 to 50000 numbers. Fill series comes handy in such scenarios. Insert a starting number in the first cell like 1 and then Select the fill series drop down from the editing group in the home Tab.

From the drop down select the series option. Choose columns and give a max value ex: 40000 like below

This inserts numbers till 40000.

Fill function can also be used to fill dates, months, weekdays or any other lists.

Pivot Table:

Pivot tables is a very powerful features which gives the user control and flexibility to analyze data in a more systematic and readable way.

To insert a pivot table you must have an organized data. Select the data and choose pivot from Insert Tab.

You get the below popup:

It’s better to select a new worksheet for pivot table and say ok. You get the layout of a pivot in a new sheet with the column heading on the right side and skeleton of the pivot on the left side of the sheet.

Now to check the revenue for each product per region select region and product and drop it in the “ROW LABELS” section and select revenue and drop it in “VALUES” label to get the below summary.

You can further change it as per your need. It’s as simple as choosing the fields needed and dropping it in an appropriate label. When a pivot table is inserted you get two more tabs on the ribbons, Options and Design. Option tab has many features related to the pivot table inserted where as design tab gives choice of designs to the pivot. To know more of pivots in length do visit my video section where you get to know many advance features like inputting formulas in the pivot, auto-refreshing pivots, pivot charts, grouping, and so on.... Follow the link in the page: http://epaathshaala.50webs.com/video/excel2007.html

{We learn more by looking for the answer to a question and not finding it than we do from learning the answer itself} ~Lloyd Alexander

Charts:

Inserting charts is a very easy and dynamic affair in excel 2007. Select the data you want and click on the graph choose from one of the type of chart and that’s it you are good to go.

Example: Below is the data which need to be presented graphically. Select the data and click on the charts group and select the column type -2D – 1st type and you have a nice graph on the sheet.

To know more about charts like to change the scale of the chart, other types like pie, line, advance formatting of the charts and combining 2 types of charts into one do follow the link in my blog to watch the video.

http://epaathshaala.50webs.com/video/excel2007.html

Get External Data:

Excel 2007 offers a handy feature of getting data from other applications like access, text files or web pages. It’s a very useful tool to get information from website in a meaningful and flexible format.

This command group is located in the tab “DATA”.

To understand the functionality let’s get data from a website say www.google.com. Click the second option “From Web” in the command group “Get External Data”. A new popup window is displayed as below.

In the address field provide the url as in this case we input the link for google. Click on Import button once the page loads in this popup. And then provide the reference in which sheet starting from which cell you want the web info dump.

To know more about how to get data from access queries or other applications keep checking upcoming video section in the url http://epaathshaala.50webs.com/video/excel2007.html.

Sorting Data:

To sort the data just select the data you want to sort and click on sort command from “Data” tab.

Normally the data we work has a column heading so make sure to check the box “My data has headers”.

Now in the above box levels can be added to one’s satisfaction. There is no limit on how many levels you can add.

Also you can order and re-order the levels using the up and down arrow in the box and once done click ok.

{Learning is a treasure that will follow its owner everywhere}

-Chinese Proverb

Filtering Data:

Filtering Data in excel 2007 is just clicking the filter symbol in the “Data” tab. This action applies filter to the first row header. Once filtered, a detailed analysis can be done on the data. To open a dropdown of any column header use the shortcut ALT + down arrow key.

The new feature in filtering in 2007 world is that you can also filter a data with colour. Also you can apply filters for more than 2 items in columns which was not possible in Excel 2003.

To know more about advance filter and sorting data keep checking upcoming video section in the url http://epaathshaala.50webs.com/video/excel2007.html.

Text to columns:

“Text to columns” is used to split a column with a delimiter. For illustration consider the below list which has email ids.

If this list runs to 1000’s of emails and to split the domain (website) name with the person name will be a very tough exercise. To achieve this with ease we can utilize text-to-column feature in excel 2007.

Select the data and hit the button “Text to Column” in the data tab.

From the popup box choose delimited and in the next section select other and input “@” as the delimiter. We use the symbol @ as this is the symbol which separates the domain name with the user name. Once given the delimiter the preview section shows the result at the bottom.

Preview the result and then click finish. This will split the column into 2 one with the usernames and the other as domain names.

Data Validation:

Data validation is used to limit the input options in a cell. If for example there is a need to restrict a cell value to 2 i.e. male and female. Select the cell where validation is to be applied and select Data validation from the “Data” Tab. In the below popup box as shown select “List” from the first dropdown and in the source input the 2 values—male and female. Select ok. Now the cell can only contain 2 values either “male” or “female”. IF at all any other value is inputted it gives an error.

More controls can be applied by adding an input message to guide the user about the validation, error alert- a custom message telling about the error and so on...

Validation can also be applied for numbers, list of names, dates and many others....

For validating cells with named ranges please visit the URL http://epaathshaala.50webs.com/video/excel2007.html.

{Every time I learn something, I learn that there is lot to learn.}

-One of my favourites

What – If Analysis Tools:

Excel 2007 offers 3 various types of What-If Analysis Tools (Scenario Manager, Goal Seek, and Data Table).

Goal Seek: Consider the below table.

The table show that if the market price of “Reliance” is 435 and if the no. of shares are 100 then the total net worth would be No. Of Shares X Market Price which would be 43,500.

Note: The total i.e. net worth must contain a formula which in this case would be =B2*C2.

To know what should be the Market Price for the net worth to be 50,000 using goal seek. Click on “goal seek” on data tab and set the values as below. Click ok and this tells us that to make a net worth of 50,000 our market price must be 500. So this is the usage of Goal Seek to determine what if one condition changes.

To know more on the other 2 types of What-If analysis tools-----Scenario Manager and Data Tables please check the website or request a video and it should be there on the video section on the site once requested.

Subtotals:

Subtotals are used to analyze data at each breakup. Consider the below table. It’s difficult to analyse this data and draw conclusions.

Now using subtotals this can be made more meaningful. The first step before applying subtotals is that the data must be sorted. Use the sort feature and sort the data by sales manager, vendor name, and date and so on so that it looks like below.

Once sorted place the cell anywhere in the data and hit the symbol “Subtotal” from the Data Tab. This results in below prompt.

In this popup the first drop down is the column heading. Selecting “Sales Manager” will display data in relation to “Sales Manager”. And “Sales” for each Sales Manager should be displayed so “Sales” checkbox is selected. To view information for different data and column header select the appropriate. Clicking on OK displays the result in the required format.

To see less detailed i.e. totals “Sales Manager” wise select the 2nd level from the top left side of the data.

To get back to the full detailed view click 3 on the top left side. To remove the subtotals select the data with subtotals, click the subtotals symbol and from the popup box click the button “Remove All”.

"A fool with a tool is still a fool"

-My Favourite

Formulas and Functions If condition: “If”-condition has 3 parameters.

1) Logical test

2) Value if true

3) Value if false

Consider the below table with amounts. Suppose the requirement is to identify the numbers which are greater than 100 and less than 100 then if condition can be used as below.

Based on the above example many other scenarios can be tested. Also if can be combined with “OR”, “AND” functions to test on multiple conditions.

Sum-IF: This function is used to sum all the values if a particular condition satisfies. From the above table if we need to find out the total amount of all the cells with “Great” or “Bad” then the formula would be as below.

The first condition in the formula is the range which contains the logical test. Here B1:B7 as this is the range which contains “Great” or any other word for which we need the sum.

The second condition is called criteria here A9 as this cell contains the term we need the sum for i.e. “Great”.

The third condition is the sum range here A1:A7 as this is the range which contains the amounts.

So this gives a result of 332.

Similarly same logic can be applied for count-if function.

To see more of sum-if (multiple sum-ifs, count-ifs and complex nested if conditions) post a request and it should be added to the video section in the portal epaathshaala.50webs.com.

Other text, date functions, lookup (v-lookup, h-lookup, offset, index, match, indirect) would be posted very soon on the video sections.

Participants attending the VBA workshop, send a mail request for notes referencing your name along with date and venue of the workshop.

Do post in your requests or feedback to arsalan701@gmail.com.

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