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

A different owl's take on the five biggest ooh! moment tips in Excel

Posted by Andy Brown on 17 June 2019

This month it's Shaun's turn to nominate the five best short-cut tips in Excel.

A short-cut key to bring up the arguments of user-defined functions

Posted by Andy Brown on 17 June 2019

When you discover a new short-cut key, should you share it? This blog shows a way to bring up Intellisense for the arguments to user-defined functions in Excel VBA.

Why the Excel range name conflict dialog box appears, and how to avoid looping

Posted by Andy Brown on 14 June 2019

When you're copying worksheets containing range names, Excel can detect conflicts and take you into a seemingly endless loop of Yes/No dialog boxes. This blog explains why this happens, and how to get out of the loop!

Andy B's five biggest OOH! moments on an Excel training course.

Posted by Andy Brown on 09 May 2019

All trainers live for that moment when someone's face lights up, as they learn something new which will change their working life for the better. This blog lists my 5 biggest such OOH moments from our Excel training courses. How many of these tips do you know?

Use the Excel camera tool, or create a linked picture in Word or PowerPoint

Posted by Andy Brown on 25 April 2018

This blog shows options for creating a webcam focused on one particular area of an Excel workbook! You can do this either by pasting the Excel range into PowerPoint or Word as a linked picture, or by using the Excel camera tool.

Changes to Wise Owl Excel courses (including a new intermediate course)

Posted by Andy Brown on 15 January 2018

We've revamped our Excel course offerings, to include a new one-day Intermediate Excel course to sit between our introduction and advanced courses.

How to create multiple worksheets based on pivot table report filter values

Posted by Andy Brown on 08 December 2017

Did you know that you can automatically generate multiple versions of a pivot table, with each one configured to filter by a different item? We didn't - this blog is an attempt to apologise for our oversight!

How to reuse a query created in Query Editor or Power Query

Posted by Andy Brown on 29 November 2017

This short blog explains how you can copy and paste the steps of a query that you've created in Power Query (within Power BI Desktop). The steps also work for queries created in Power Query within Excel.

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!