Book Image

Exploring Microsoft Excel’s Hidden Treasures

By : David Ringstrom
Book Image

Exploring Microsoft Excel’s Hidden Treasures

By: David Ringstrom

Overview of this book

David Ringstrom coined the phrase “Either you work Excel, or it works you!” after observing how many users carry out tasks inefficiently. In this book, you’ll learn how to get more done with less effort. This book will enable you to create resilient spreadsheets that are easy for others to use as well, while incorporating spreadsheet disaster preparedness techniques. The time-saving techniques covered in the book include creating custom shortcuts and icons to streamline repetitive tasks, as well as automating them with features such as Tables and Custom Views. You’ll see how Conditional Formatting enables you to apply colors, Cell icons, and other formatting on-demand as your data changes. You’ll be empowered to protect the integrity of spreadsheets and increase usability by implementing internal controls, and understand how to solve problems with What-If Analysis features. In addition, you’ll master new features and functions such as XLOOKUP, Dynamic Array functions, LET and LAMBDA, and Power Query, while learning how to leverage shortcuts and nuances in Excel. By the end of this book, you’ll have a broader awareness of how to avoid pitfalls in Excel. You’ll be empowered to work more effectively in Excel, having gained a deeper understanding of the frustrating oddities that can arise daily in Excel.
Table of Contents (18 chapters)
1
Part 1: Improving Accessibility
6
Part 2:Spreadsheet Interactivity and Automation
12
Part 3: Data Analysis

Summary

Often, Excel’s What-If Analysis features are overlooked as a means to automate repetitive tasks in Excel. In this chapter, you learned about the PMT, CUMIPMT, and CUMPRINC functions, which can be used to calculate loan payments and total interest for one or more periods in a loan. We used those functions as the basis for walking through the What-If Analysis features in Excel. For instance, the Scenario Manager feature enables you to swap different sets of inputs into a worksheet and compare the results by way of scenario reports. Alternatively, Goal Seek allows you to solve for a single missing input. This eliminates the manual guesswork that can otherwise be involved in trying to determine the missing amount.

Then, our trip through the Data | What-If Analysis menu took us to the Data Table feature. Data Tables can solve multiple equations at once based on swapping out one or more inputs. This gives your formulas better integrity because you don’t have to...