Wise Owl Training - Excel blogs (page 1 of 3)

Loading live web data into Excel without writing VBA code to scrape HTML

Posted by Andy Brown on 21 August 2017

Need to get tables of data into Excel from a website? There's no need to write lots of VBA code to scrape the site - just use Power Query to create a live link to the relevant page(s).

Find the many ways to interact directly between Excel and Power BI Service

Posted by Andy Brown on 29 June 2017

You can pull Excel workbooks (or individual data ranges) into Power BI Service, or push them from Excel using a special add-in. This blog shows how to use both approaches, as well as the underwhelming Analyze in Excel feature.

Three different ways to find the differences between two Excel worksheets

Posted by Andy Brown on 01 June 2017

There are a few ways to find the differences between two Excel worksheets. This blog considers 3 methods (using Excel formulae, using Query Editor and using the Inquire add-in).

The new functions in Excel 2016, including IFS, SWITCH and TEXTJOIN

Posted by Andy Brown on 18 February 2017

Excel 2016 has a few interesting new functions! TEXTJOIN allows you to concatenate all the cells in a range, and IFS and SWITCH provide other ways to make choices.

Want to be get at the file path for an Excel workbook easily? Here's how!

Posted by Andy Brown on 26 January 2017

This short blog explains how you can customise your quick access toolbar to display the path of the file that you are currently working on.

How to pick out the first and last dates for a given group using DAX

Posted by Andy Brown on 06 October 2016

It's often challenging working out how to use DAX to solve specific problems. This blog shows how to produce a pivot table showing the first and last instances of any category.

Which Power BI course should you take - Excel Power BI or Power BI Desktop?

Posted by Andy Brown on 22 July 2016

Microsoft are pursuing two separate BI lines at the moment: one for the Power BI tools which run within Excel, and another for the standalone application called Desktop Power BI. This blog attempts to explain the differences between two applications with such confusingly similar names!

What's new in Microsoft Office 2016 (including Excel 2016 changes)

Posted by Andy Brown on 07 September 2015

The latest incarnation of Microsoft Office (2016) should be released on 22nd September 2015 (Microsoft are always a bit ahead of themselves with versions). This blog gives a detailed guide to what's new, the biggest changes being in Excel and Outlook.

Using DAX Studio to edit calculated fields or measures in Excel

Posted by Andy Brown on 20 February 2015

The editor for calculated fields in Excel (aka measures) isn't the greatest; this blog shows you how to install and use DAX Studio as a substitute editor.

Revealing how Excel workbooks are actually stored as zipped XML files

Posted by Andy Brown on 16 May 2014

Did you know that Excel workbooks are really just a collection of XML files, all zipped together? We didn’t either, so we thought we'd tell the world.

A review of Power View, including examples of use

Posted by Andy Brown on 09 January 2014

Power View is an Excel or SharePoint add-in which allows you to create quick and interactive dashboard reports, with built-in drill-down. This blog considers whether you're missing a trick if you don't know how to use Power View.

How to refer to range names with worksheet and workbook scope

Posted by Andy Brown on 01 November 2013

Range names can have either worksheet or workbook scope - this blog shows how to make sure that you're referring to the right range names!

How to get row labels for a pivot table group to repeat

Posted by Andy Brown on 01 November 2013

A short blog showing how to stop Excel hiding duplicate values for pivot table groups.

A blog showing how to use the SUMPRODUCT function

Posted by Andy Brown on 01 November 2013

The SUMPRODUCT function is one of the hardest ones to understand in Excel, but it's also pretty useful. This blog gives clear examples of how to use SUMPRODUCT for conditional sums, weighted averages and the like.

How to get Excel to speak to you in a female voice, or slower/faster!

Posted by Andy Brown on 13 August 2013

A previous blog showed how to get Excel to speak to you; this one shows how to change the voice in which it does it!

How to get Excel to speak to you - reading out the contents of cells

Posted by Andy Brown on 12 August 2013

Deep within its bowels Excel contains a feature allowing it to read out the contents of cells (you can also get your VBA macros to talk to users). This blog goes to those deep places hidden within Excel!

Drop Lines in Excel Charts: Ah, that's what I needed!

Posted by Michael Allsop on 24 May 2013

Ever had the feeling that you're missing something obvious? This blog highlights one particular chart option that you may well have overlooked.

Problem with using VBA to create chart labels

Posted by Andy Brown on 04 April 2013

If your chart has more than a thousand data labels, this blog explains why you may experience problems.

An overview of PowerPivot for Excel 2010

Posted by Andy Brown on 31 January 2013

PowerPivot is a superb addition to Excel: it allows you to create pivot tables based on multiple tables taken from a variety of data sources, and its DAX language lets you report any statistic you want. This overview summarises how to get started with PowerPivot, and what it does.

What's new in Excel 2013

Posted by Andy Brown on 30 January 2013

Excel 2013 contains radical changes to charts, pivot tables and the user interface. This review explains all the new features of Excel 2013