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• Best practices for data visualization
• Publishing and sharing reports across your organization

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The post Best Excel Power BI Course for 2025: Learn from the Experts appeared first on Excel Zoom.

There are two ways of organizing your data in Excel, either it could be a list or it could be a excel table. Both has its advantages and disadvantages. In today’s post, we will try to learn about the later and see how to get most out of it – i.e. excel tables.

Tables are identified by a header row and a column, where is for list, there is only a header row. Tables are good when you want to summarize the information. The conventional table can be created by simply putting borderline around the data, but for a table to be an excel table, you need to apply the table formatting to it using the ribbon menu or simply press CTRL+T as you have selected the data.

You can apply formatting according to your choice of color. This is the table produced by applying table formatting.

Using options in Table Design Ribbon:

There are number of options available to format layout of the table. Here are they listed with some explanation.

Header Row:

This will add the header row for the table. For our case it is months listed in the Row # 3.

Banded Rows:

Enabling this option will show the horizontal border lines in the table cells.

Banded Columns:

Enabling this option will show the vertical border lines in the table cells.

Total Row:

This will automatically add a total row to the bottom of the table – if you have added the total column then it will be added to the total column. More on this in later section of articles.

First Column:

This option will turn First column Text bold.

Last Column:

This option will turn Last column Text bold.

Other Options Available:

The Excel table can be exported to SharePoint and the data can be refreshed from the option given. We can also refresh the range of the table in we have put more rows or columns in it and also there is an option to remove duplicates from the table.

Adding Subtotals to the Last Row:

Adding subtotals to the last row is easy – you can go to table design menu, select add total row and it’s done. By default, it is added to the last column to the right if you have added the total column. But it could be added to any column in the table.

The last row can display variety of functions beside the default SUM function. We can have average, max, min and count functions as well for our tables.

There is even an option to get more functions for the table, just click more functions to access all the functions.

Consolidating data present in Tables:

This will work even if the data is not present in tables, but works a treat if it is an excel table, as you have already that subtotal function added to you data. In order for consolidation option to work, you need to have multiple table of similar format on different sheets. Just as shown in the following diagram:

The process starts by laying down three similar tables, and a similar table for summary. Then we point to the ribbon and go to tab “Data” and select he consolidates option. A menu pops up asking for few following options:

Function to be used:

This option lists down what type of function would you like to use – there are around a dozen of functions available like: Sum, Count, Average, Min, Max, Product and so on. We can use these functions as per our requirement.

Further Advantages of Using Tables:

With using data tables, it becomes really easy to enter data as the table keeps expanding as we enter data. This is done with the help of a small blue box that appears in the last row of the table. As reach the cell with this box and press Enter, a new row is automatically added the.

1. There is no need to drag down the formulas or flash fill formulas, the formulas in excel table is automatically filled. We just need to enter on the top row and the rest of the column is filled automatically.
2. There is no need for freezing panes when working with a table. With non-excel tables, we need to freeze pans so that when we scroll, we can see the header row, but with excel tables the header row is always visible.
3. You don’t need to the total row, as already described in the previous sections. Infect you can use anything besides sum to summarize the sheet.
4. There is a lot of ease in creating charts. If you are making tables the basis of the chart, the data in the chart will be updated automatically and there is no need for manually dragging ranges.

Conclusion:

Tables are handy features of MS Excel. They are useful because they allow better management of data, easy calculations and stigmatization.  Please download the file from this link and see how it actually works.

The post What are MS Excel Tables – Tips and Tricks appeared first on Excel Zoom.

A project is a onetime activity that can span over varying length of time. A project could be an activity that can finish in a day or it could cover months and years. Project management is the process of managing this activity. As the complexity of the project increases, it becomes more and more difficult to manage it, hence require more and more skilled people. However, whatever be the project and however is handling it, one tool is always there to help them – that is called Gantt chart or simply the project timeline.

In this post, we will discuss methods that can be used to have a project time line in Excel. The question might be asked why to use excel when there are specialized software available for project time lines. The answer is simple, the cost of such software some time way more than one can afforded for minor projects. Or even if the software and less expensive, it might have a steep learning curve. Hence people revert to the use of MS Excel for project management.

How does a project time line look?

Most of the project time lines or Gantt charts have activities on the right hand side and the date line on the top of the table. This makes it easier to list down all the activities one by one. Using, the activities are sub divided into smaller activities and still smaller activities – this is called the Work breakdown Structure of a project.

The Gantt chart uses indentation to mark sub activities. Sometimes number separated by a decimal place is used to show the hierarchy. The activities column is followed by two more columns that describe start and the end date of the activity. Here is a sample of how does a Gantt chart look like.

Creating your own project time line:

Various website offer ready to use templates for project time line, but we can also create our own as per our personal requirements. In the following lines, we will understand how to create the above project line.

Step 1 – Work Breakdown Structure

Make sure you have one! Without WBS, it is difficult to plan a Gantt chart, if not available, you can create some dummy activities just to fill the space. It will make it easier to understand the flow of the process. You can use either indentation for creating hierarchy of activities or use consecutive column to put in different activities.

In our case, we have used different column to put in the sub activities.

Step – 2 Have a Stand and End Date Column

The start and the end date describes the start and end date for all the levels of the activity. The start and end date for main activity should encompass all sub activities and tasks. There two possibilities to create end date and start date in Gantt chart:

1. Put start and end date manually.
2. Put start date and enter number of days required for that activity to complete. The end date can be obtained by adding the number of such day.

End Date = Start Date + Days Required To Finish the Job

In our case, we have entered the values manually.

Step – 3 Creating Header Row with Dates:

This is amongst the most important part of creating a project time line, because without dates, it will not give us our desired result. We start with a date and then keeping adding one to it so that it progresses automatically.

Thus in G2, we put the first date manually, and from it onward to the right, the date is calculated by adding one to the proceeding one. G3 becomes G2+1, G4 = G3+1 and so on.

Step – 4 Showing the activity with shaded area.

One done with these three steps, the next and the most critical step is show the activity progress by shading some cells. For smaller projects with less frequent steps, we can do this task manually. But in case you want your activities progress to be date dependent then will require some excel understanding.

In order to make progress date dependent, we will make use of conditional formatting menu.

We use and IF() function with AND() to get our desired result. The formula works by evaluating the AND() function. This function checks if the date in the header row lies in date bracket of start and end date. If it lies, the formula will return 1 and else will give 0.

For example taking up the first cell, in G3, the formula is evaluated in the following manner.

=IF(AND(G$2>=$E3,G$2<=$F3),1,””)

The first part to be evaluated in G$2>=$E3, G2 is in the header column,  this compared the time line value in cell G2 with start date in E3, we have fixed row referencing style for G2 and fixed column refereeing style for E3, as we will be dragging the formula, rightwards and downwards.

The second part of the formula G$2<=$F3 will compare if the time line value is less than the end date. If yes then AND() will return a TRUE, the formula only works when we have both TRUE. The result will be a table with 1 and 0.

You can see he progress in form of arrays of 1 in rows.

Step – 5 Applying Conditional Formatting

Now we will use these 1s and 0s for conditionally formatting cells.

1. Select the entire range from G3:AK13.
2. Go to Conditional Formatting Dialogue Box and select Rule Manager.
3. From there select New Rule. This will make a new rule.
4. Using New Rule, select the last options from dialogue box that sets criteria for cells to be formatted based on cell value.
5. Select formatting from same dialogue box – select a color to fill and the same color for font in the cells.
6. Remove fixed cell referencing from the formula section.

7. The formula should be =G3=1 that means that when applied it will have all the cells that are equal to 1.
8. Press Ok to exist the dialogue box, press on one again and press Apply to apply the formatting.

Once done the final output should look like.

Conclusion:

You can see that cell, with value 1 are only filled with color creating the project time line effect. The entire cell there had zero are now blank. In this ways we can create the project timeline in excel. Please download this file to see how things works and create your own time line

The post Creating Project Timeline or Gantt Chart with MS Excel appeared first on Excel Zoom.

The conditional formatting is used for highlighting cells that meet certain criteria. These cells can be duplicate values or they may fall within certain limits or a similar criteria. In today’s tutorial we will be explaining how to highlight a cell’s value when it meets criteria in a cell.

Most often we use cell referencing to set criteria for conditional formatting when we know that the criteria will change hence in this post we will show how to setup conditional formatting for such cases.

Here are examples to explain the functioning:

Highlighting First Names with Conditional Formatting:

Let’s assume that we have a list of names (first and second name) and we want to highlight all the names that have certain first name.  The criteria cell for this case is B3 that contains the first name we are looking for, whereas the list is located in $A$3:$A$10. The excel sheet looks like following:

The question is how to setup a formula where i can highlight the names with first name – “Andrade”?

Our formula:

Following picture shows the formula that serves the purpose:

The formula actually works by finding the space between the first and the second name and then taking up the first name and ignoring the second one. This does not finish the formula, in order to return true or false the result need to be compared with value in $B$1 and the result will either highlight or not highlight the list. Here is step by step solution of the formula:

1. We start with the formula =LEFT($A3,FIND(” “,$A3)-1)=$B$1 and start evaluating the expression from inside out.
2. The first expression evaluated is $A3 that represents the name in the list – Andrade France.
3. The second expression evaluated is FIND(” “,$A3) that is evaluated when the function looks for the space in text in cell $A3. This evaluates to 8 for this case as space character is the eighth character in the text. The final expression thus becomes =LEFT(Andrade France, 8-1)=$B$1.
4. In the next step, one is subtracted from 8 giving us the exact length of the first name.
5. Now the first name is extracted using the LEFT() function that starts from the left side of the text and extracts 8 characters that forms the first name.
6. As a last step, the extracted name is compared with the criteria value and TRUE or FALSE is returned.

After setting up this formula, we will set the formatting style for to for conditional formatting and we have out highlighted list of names.

Highlighting second name with conditional formatting

Just like what we did for the first name, we can also setup a formula to search for and highlight the second name in a list. (Or simply anything that follows after the first space in a sentence). For example, for the name “Andrade France” the second name is “France” that can be highlighted in a list. The formula used in this case will be:

=RIGHT(A2,LEN(A2)-FIND(" ",A2))=$B$1

Steps:

The formula will evaluate in the following steps:

1. The first thing to evaluate is A2, the first argument of the RIGHT function that will evaluate to Andrade France.
2. The next expression evaluated will be the function LEN() that will be evaluated to 14.
3. This will be followed by evaluation of FIND() function that will find the space in the text – again it will be the eighth character in the text.
4. The difference of the LEN() and FIND() will give use the length of the second name. For this case it is 14-8 =6.
5. In the second last step, the RIGHT() function will extract the 6 characters from the right side.
6. Lastly the name will be compared with the criteria to return a TRUE or FALSE as result.

We can set the conditional formatting to highlight the second name as well in the text.

Highlight  values in a Range:

Another example could be to highlight cell based on range of value. We can also do it using the conventional (and somewhat more easy method of using menus) method. But in this section we will try to learn an new method that will make use of a formula AND() to explain the process. The following is the screenshot of the formula:

Steps:

Here is how the formula is implemented:

1. The formula works by using the logical function AND().
2. Within this function there are two conditions that need to be fulfilled to get a TRUE. Once get true the conditional formatting will be triggered and we have cells filled with color.
3. The first argument makes sure that value in the cell is greater than or equal to the criteria value by comparing the two – B3>=$B$1, here B3 is the cell in the list and B1 contains the criteria.
4. The same thing is done by placing a check on the upper limit by using B3<=$D$1.
5. When both of the criteria’s are meeting, we have TRUE that will trigger the conditional formatting.

Highlight  cells containing certain text  (wildcard search):

It could be troublesome if you have long list of comments and you want to highlight it for certain keywords like “good”, “bad”, “awesome” and so on. The Excel’s feature highlight containing text is the solution to this wildcard type search requirement. All you need is a cell dedicated for containing the criteria.

In this example, we will be examining the comments for an app from Google play store. Here are the comments:

We will setup first a cell that will contain our criteria – “annoying” for example. What we will do is to put these criteria in cell A1 and go to “Text that contain” text. The only thing we need to do is to point to the cell containing criteria. Once selected and pressed we are done.

Conclusion:

There are several ways we can format cells based on criteria in a cell. These were just few of them. Another option for formatting cell based cell values is to use VBA – but that is out of scope of this article. Please download the file from this link to see the formulas working.

The post A how-to guide to conditional formatting based on another cell appeared first on Excel Zoom.

There are instances when we are interested in counting things. This is true for accountants, engineers, managers and so on. To count, we usually record quantities, either on paper on spread – or if we record on paper, we eventually transfer it to a spreadsheet to make calculations more manageable. COUNTIF() or COUNTIFS() is the function that we use when doing so on spreadsheets.

In today’s post, we will describes the “celebrated” COUNTIF() function and its sister function COUNTIFS() to see how it can help analyses the data when it comes to count.

COUNTIF() Function:

The COUNTIF() function counts for only one criteria and for only one range. This is the definite limitation of the function when a user is willing to count with more than one criterion. But it is not always that we have multiple criteria. The excel help provides following syntax for the function:

COUNTIFS() Function:

This function can take more than one.  Hence it a go for choice where we have more than one criterion. It takes consecutive inputs for criteria_range and then criteria and returns the count.

Since most of us are already familiar with the syntax of these functions we will proceed by taking up “Scenarios” where these functions can be used:

THE COUNTIF () FUNCTION WITH EXAMPLES

Accounting – Counting Absents and Presents from attendance recorded:

Record from Personal or administration department is sent to accounts for finalizing the salaries on monthly basis.  Accountant are faced with the task of counting or re-validating the presents and absents in the data. COUNTIF function is useful in this scenario where we can count for “P”s and “A”s in the data (see Sheet1A):

The result can be found using the COUNTIF() formula be referring to the ranges and putting up the criteria: “P” and “A” respectively.

In the above formulas the first argument refers to the lookup range where attendance is recorded and the second one is the criteria itself. For absents we count for “A” and for presents we count for “P” thus giving the total count of attendance.

Managing HR Training by using COUNTIF() function:

Companies hire HR people so to manage their HR and staffing needs. In order to make them work efficiently they are given several types of training. Following is a sample report that records training received by human resource staff and various training areas.

The staff that has been training for a topic is marked “D” or done, ones that are still in progress are represented by “IP” or “in progress” and the areas where no training is attended is represented by “-“ (see Sheet2A).

The sheet is populated using the following formula that gives the required results.

Using COUNTIF () function for Inventory Control and Operations:

Manufacturing companies are always looking for a better way to manage their inventory, be it finished one, raw material or inventory in-process. We can use COUNTIF() function to perform simple counts over inventory sheets. The typical way of doing physical count is to use tally marks notation but count if can also be used to count if data is present in a spreadsheet:

The formulas in this sheet are used with logical operator to confirm if the quantity is cross threshold – or a critical level in simple words. This makes sure that we reorder the part well before it hits zero and our operations is interrupted. The following picture (see Sheet3A) shows the result that is obtained.

In the above formula the logical operator “<=” ensures the that COUNTIF() formula counts for values only lower than one set in threshold cells and are presented by values in Column B. Other logical operators that we can use are equal to sign (“=”), greater than or equal to (“>=”), greater then sign (“>”). Additionally we have less than sign (“<”) and not equal to or other then sign (“<>”) as well.

USING COUNTIFS() FUNCTION WITH EXAMPLES:

COUNTIFS() is just a sister function of the COUNTIF() but is more useful when we have more than one traits to count. This function takes multiple criteria and multiple ranges to look up and then return the final count. The argument of the function is already explained in the preceding lines. We will explain it with examples (see Sheet1B):

The example in the above sheet is related to both HR and Accounts department where HR department sent an attendance sheet for reimbursement of training fee claim by a trainer.

The result that we obtained with the formula is shown below:

Another example of using COUNTIFS () could be for the manufacturing case where we want to count for various items bought from a certain manufacturer. In the following table we have listed items along with their supplier and want to know how frequent we have bought certain item for a supplier (see Sheet3B).

In this case we are interested in not individual items but family of item like ALLEN KEY SCREW bought from a certain supplier. To find such a count we will be using the wild cards for search. Wild cards search for other than exact criteria like we are not searching for ALLEN KEY SCREW 5 X 13 but for ALLEN KEY SCREWS only.

This is accomplished when we embed our criteria in asterisks with ampersand to connect it with the lookup criteria. Following table is produced as a result.

Conclusion:

There could be various instances where we can use this COUNTIF() or COUNTIFS() we have mentioned just few. Though these functions are really helpful but they have a limitation as well. The functions are limited by the fact that they only works in columns and if will not work for rows. We have to resort to other functions like SUMPRODUCT or SUM (used as an array formula) to count.

Please download the attached sheet to see how things actually work in spreadsheet.

The post Getting Most Out of COUNTIF() and COUNTIFS() function in Excel appeared first on Excel Zoom.

The data analysts start their analysis by visual examination of the data. This is to see if there are any patterns present or if there is any (apparent) relationship between variables. The data such plotted produced graphs of various types – an Excel Histogram is just one of them.

In today’s tutorial, we will learn a little but of theory about histogram, how to read it, few statistical terms and finally, how to plot a histogram using MS Excel.

The “Concise Oxford Dictionary of Mathematics” defines Histogram as:

“A diagram representing the frequency distribution of data grouped by means of class intervals. It consists of a sequence of rectangles, each of which has as its base one of the class intervals and is of a height taken so that the area is proportional to the frequency. If the class intervals are of equal lengths, then the heights of the rectangles are proportional to the frequencies.”

In this definition (and for the discrete data sets) the “frequency distribution” is the frequency of how often a number is repeated in a data set. The term “class interval ” represents the grouping of data in n-groups where n can be an arbitrary value.

The Nomenclature of a Histogram:

There are some features that can be found in every histogram. The following picture shows various parts of it!

The above figure is overall a histogram. In this histogram:

1. The yellow bars represent the frequency of items. For the fixed interval class, the height is proportional to the frequency of the items.
2. The X-Axis has “Intervals” or it represents the class width for which the frequency is reported. In above example class 60-65 has frequency of 25.
3. The Y-Axis represents the frequency axis.

Taking a sample data and working out Histogram:

If you have a data set for creating histogram that is great. If not, you can make one using excel function RANDBETWEEN(). This function can give you randomly generated numbers between an lower and an upper bounds and you can analyze it with histogram.

Let’s take an example of data generated between zero and 25 as shown in the following picture:

Generate data and keep only values (NO formula):

In order to make a histogram, the first step is to get rid of this RANDBETWEEN() formula when we have our data. To make this data static, copy the entire column and Paste Special as Value only. This will remove the formula but will keep the values and make data stationary.

Define “Class Width” and create a table for “Bins”:

Let’s assume the class width be 5 – this means data will be grouped in groups of 05 each. The bin represents interval by itself.

Use Data Analysis Tool Pack to Create a Histogram:

Excel’s data analysis tool pack is the easiest way to generate Histogram. To access the feature your first need to load the add-in from File>Options>Add-Ins>Manage Add-ins>Analysis Tool Pack. This will cause Data Analysis tool pack to be displayed in the data menu.

When you will choose data analysis tool pack, it will show you variety of options, you have to select Histogram. In the Histogram dialogue box, you need to enter the range referring to the data and the data bins.

After doing with the input range and the output options, you can press OK and a histogram will be produced like on shown below:

The table on the right is bin-wise frequency of the data and the same is shown through a bar chart on the right.

Adding More Options:

Let’s try tick all the options available in the lower left side of the dialogue box and see what is the result:

The first two columns in the table are the same as were in the last case. The third column reporting the cumulative % is calculated by dividing the running sum with the total values in the data set. (In our case it is 50 so 2/50=4.00%, (2+7)/50=18% and so on).

In the second part of the table the bins are sorted according to the highest frequency. Thus the bin with the highest one comes first (25 with count of 13) followed by 15 (count of 11) and so on and then the last column reports the percentage with running sum as we have calculated previously.

The chart shown on the left is a “prioritized histogram” – a type of histogram that shows the factors taking into account the effect or weight. So in this histogram the bin 25 has the highest effect (with highest frequency) and so on. The red line in the chart shows the cumulative effect and we can see that in light of 80/20 rule, the most important section of the data belongs to the first and the second bar i.e. data from Bin 25 and 15.

Conclusion:

We can still explore this histogram by choosing lesser options to see if the “skewness” and “kurtosis” of the data visually. Please download the sample for this tutorial to see how the things actually work.

The post Understanding How to Create a Histogram with MS Excel appeared first on Excel Zoom.

In this short post, we will learn the five key excel skills that are needed for accountants.  Essentially these are the five features of the program that every accountant should know.  We will go through each of them one by one and you will see how it leads to improved efficiency and productivity in your everyday work.

Understanding and Using Formulas:

Excel 2010 has functions that are present under various categories.  It is not correct to say that an accountant should learn each and every function in Excel. For example we will not find it convincing that an accountant should learn “Engineering Functions”.  Learning a few of them that are regularly used can help automate tasks.

Excel’s built in formulas come with help and examples so they are really easy to understand.  In fact they are great help in preparing templates (for example Managing attendance with Excel zoom’s Attendance Template) for performing repeating calculations.  Accountants will find functions related to Date and Time, Finance, Math and Trigonometry.  Additionally, Statistical, Lookup and Reference functions are used quite frequently.

MS excel also offers option to create user defined functions through VBA (Visual Basic). With VBA, created function can be called and used in the workbooks like a built in function.  So if you find something missing from Excel, just write a VBA function for that or, better yet, create an Excel Add-In similar to our Excel Audit Tick Mark Toolbar.

Managing Data with Tables:

Tables helpful in managing data in your worksheet and yet another great Feature of MS Excel. Learning how to use a Table can be a really helpful skill for accountants. Table provides us some key features that make slicing and dicing data easy. For example with tables, filtering table becomes a breeze. Similarly, we have automatic subtotal in the footer row. We can format it the way we want and choose color schemes from the template.

The real benefit of Tables becomes evident when it comes to write formulas. With tables, we don’t to update ranges in the formulas. They are automatically updated with new data being entered. Another benefit when we are using tables is that Table formatting is automatically applied to new data appended to the table.

Data once sorted in table can have subtotal added to them. This is in addition to the row and column that we insert from the Table Tab. So learn how to use Table and you will improve your efficiency a lot.

Manipulating data with Pivot Tables and Power Pivot:

If an accountant is not able drill down its data to a meaningful level, he can certainly do it with Pivot Tables. Pivot Table is tool that is used to create instant summaries from Lists as data source. While using Pivots,  you can slice the data by dropping field to there area within the pivot table. Then filtering the data for details that you want will give the desired report. You can add totals, and customize the how different fields are calculated.

In Excel 2010, a new feature with the name of Power Pivot is provided that has to be installed separately. This comes loaded with a lot of new feature to the parent Pivot Tables (lately becomes part of it installation). As the MS website describes “you to import millions of rows of data from multiple data sources into a single Excel workbook, create relationships between heterogeneous data, create calculated columns and measures using formulas, build PivotTables and Pivot Charts, and then further analyze the data”

Presenting with Charts:

Business presentations are incomplete without Charts. They are the visual presentation of data that makes understanding and decision making easier. Excel has various types of charts that can be used to suit the requirement – but most commonly used are bar and line charts that every accountant must know how to do. These charts plot variables over the time (most of the time) or variables over some categories.

Anther type of chart that is useful for accountant is Pie chart that shows contribution of various factors to make a pie. This can be used to show various factors that contribute to a factor. You can also combine charts (not all but few) format them your taste. You can also export these charts to Power Point that will make your presentation more professional.

Analyzing with Analysis Tool Pack and What-If Analysis Feature:

This is a feature that comes when you install the analysis tool pack add in and is one of the most liked features by people who are into the data analysis field and are using Excel for it. Since accountants need to deal with data, they need to be good at statistics and how use and /or at least interpret the results form it.

Analysis tool pack equips Excel with various analysis tools, for most the “Regression Analysis” that is used to develop relation between two variables. It can be used for analyzing impact of one variable over other and can be use to predict values based on some input values. Similarly, one can have descriptive statistics for the data and can generate random numbers for use. It can create histogram for you as well.

Besides analysis tool pack, What-If analysis feature can help you create and analyze scenarios. It comes with Goal Seek, Data Tables and Scenario manager – each one directed helps you analyze the possible options and their impact on other variables.

Conclusion:

This is not the end of excel skills neither the end of excel skills the list that an accountant should learn. These are just few features of excel that help an accountant improve its efficiency, make analysis more real-time and make using excel fun. With every new edition of Excel, MS is adding new features to improve excel. The best approach will be to learn what is needed for you!

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Unlike usual programming languages that take only code to create a program, we can also record the actions through a feature in MS Office that is called MACRO Recorder. The Macro Recorder simply records the sequence of actions taken by us. Since it is object oriented language, the actions are recorded as actions taken on a set of objects. And then it could be re-run.

VBA, just like other programming language has a specific syntax and style of coding. It is an object oriented language (a programming methodology that is related to objects).

In this post we will discuss the 7 important facts about VBA and Macros.

Making macros available on all MS Excel worksheet:

When you are recording VBA macros, the menu prompts you to save the macro at certain location. You can choose between these two locations:

1. This workbook or the workbook you are currently working on
2. Personal.xlsb

If you choose to save the macro in the current workbook, it will not be available in other opened workbooks. In order to use a single macro in several other workbooks, you need to save it in personal.xlsb.

The personal.xlsb is by default a hidden file. It can not be seen until we unhide it. When you will open the MS Excel (and does not open any file) you can see it by pressing “unhide” from View / Unhide.

Assign Shortcut Key for repeatedly running VBA macros:

You assign a short cut key either through VBA Macro menu or by using code with in the macro. If you are looking for assigning it through menu, you can go to Developer’s Tab > Macros and select the desired Macro and press Options. Here you can add the Shortcut key (and the description of the macro as well).

The second approach is to add few lines of the code in the macro body:

Application.MacroOptions Macro:="PERSONAL.XLSB!Macro2", Description:="", _
ShortcutKey:="k"


Type of codes you can find across internet:

There are three types of VBA macros you can come across from Internet. The first one is Sub() that is a macro that runs and when you execute the macro to do certain task. This is the most common type of macro you will come across. The second type is not sub but a function – just like functions SUM() in the excel but this is user defined function or UDF and also uses VBA code. The third one is event procedures that work when certain event is done for example a macro that runs on enter certain value or macro that runs when you open your worksheet or press “Enter” key – all such are examples of event procedures.

It depends on your need what you want to achieve. For example if you have want to format cells to be yellow colored, bold and italic you can record a macro and run it through shortcut key any number of time.

If you have a very complex formula that you don’t want to type again and again, you can define a UDF for that and store in your file for future use.

If you want to display the message “welcome user” when file opens, you can add an event called “Workbook_Open()” to your code.

Where to put the set of code you found from internet:

it is equally important you place your code in the right place. Otherwise it would not work. Note that you need to:

Put Subs and function in Module in the workbook. To insert the module you need to go to Insert>Module select the module and double click to open it and then paste the code. You can put multiple codes in the same module!

For events you need to place in the specific sheet. For example if you want to change the text to bold and italic you need to place it in the specific sheet.

You need to save your workbook as macro enabled worksheet!

A sheet containing macro is different from a normal worksheet and you need to save it as macro enabled worksheet. To do so, when pressing save button, you need to select the second option from the file format menu – i.e. Excel Macro-enabled workbook (*.xlsm)

Learn how to use the immediate window in VBA Editor:

The immediate window in the one that is just below the code editor widows. If it is not visible you can enable it by pressing Ctrl+G. The immediate window is helpful in checking the small pieces of code. For example if you want to check the address of current or active cell you can use it like ?activecell.address. pressing enter will give you the address of the cell and for value you can use ?activecell.value will give you the value of the active cell.

The VBA Macros uses methods to accomplish various tasks:

VBA works on various objects using methods. Method is just like a special set of instructions that works with an object. And not all methods work with all objects. If you are planning to write a macro, make sure to do a research on methods available for that particular object. This will ease up your task by using code that is already available for you and you will not need to reinvent the wheel.

The best place to learn about methods is to the VBA Help. While VBA editor window is open, press F1 or if you are interested exploring the object-method relationship use press F2 (while VBA editor is active). You can see each object followed by the method available for it. Besides the help page MS Office development center has lot of information that can help.

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Other use cases might require you to delete any rows containing someone’s name, a location, or some other information to trim the excess data from your sheet.

How to Remove all Rows Containing Certain Data

1. Select all of your data, including the data you wish to remove.
2. Press Ctrl F to open the Find and Replace window.
3. Type the text that is contained in the row you wish to delete. For example if you need to delete rows with someone’s name, type that name in.
4. Click the Find All button.
   • This will show a list of all cells containing the data you searched for below the search box.
5. Click on one of the results that appear below the search box, then press Ctrl A.
   • All results should be highlighted now. Also, if you notice on your spreadsheet, each cell containing what you searched for will be selected.
6. Click the Close button on the Find and Replace window.
7. Press Ctrl – to open the Delete window.
8. Select the Entire Row option, and press the OK button.

All rows containing the data you wanted to remove should be gone now!

You can also remove an entire column of data that contains certain information in a similar manner. To remove the entire column, simply select the Entire Column option in the last step above.

As with any data modification, be sure to have a copy of your data saved elsewhere as a backup just in case you accidentally remove some important information. This will ensure that when trying to remove all rows containing certain data, you do so in the safest possible way.

Remove Certain Rows Containing Certain Data with VBA

In the developer tab, go to Visual Basic as normal and create a module like the one below. Change and amend the code to your needs and then simply run the module on your sheet.

 Sub Delete_All_Rows_IF_Cell_Contains_Certain_String_Text()
    Dim lRow As Long
    Dim iCntr As Long
    lRow = 1000
    For iCntr = lRow To 1 Step -1
        If Cells(iCntr, 3).Value = "Certain data to delete here" Then
            Rows(iCntr).Delete
        End If
    Next
    End 

Number “3” in the ‘If Cells (iCntr, 3).Value represents the third column (C)
lRow = 1000 means it will check the first 1000 rows.

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For the sake of this post, we will plot two different quantities of data into a combination chart expressed with bars and a line graph and also show you a lesser-known trick allowing you to graph the data logarithmically, which can sometimes yield surprising insight.

Reasons for using combination charts:

A combination chart could be used for variety of reasons, for example:

• When you have more data to plot and want to differentiate one quantity from the other
• When the values from one series is too large or small compared to the other data

So let’s see how can we create a combination chart and make it more meaningful and professional.

Our Data:

We have created a set of sample data that we will be using throughout this post.  It is evident that sales volume is far more than the number of visitors in this table:

First Step – Creating the bar chart

Starting with Sales we will create a simple bar chart to plot the data. To insert a Bar Chart go to Insert > Bar Chart while the range B2:C16 is already selected. (Or the range already selected press Alt>N>C>Enter to insert the chart. A basic and standard formatted bar chart will be displayed as a result.

Second Step – Adding No. of Visitors

Now that we want to create a combination chart, we will be adding another series to this chart – No. of visitors.

For that: Right Click chart>Select Data>Add New Series and now insert the Series Name and select the range D3:D16.

When pressed Ok, the chart will be updated. We have a new series added to the chart but we can’t see it practically on the cart – the values are too small to be visible on chart.

What we need to do is to plot it on secondary Y-Axis to get a scale that is appropriate to display the variable. Since the series is not easily visible on chart, we will be selecting it from Format menu, select available features that can be formatted and finally select Series “Visitors” and press Format Selection to format it.

Once selected we need to plot it on secondary axis.

With this data plotted on secondary axis, select the series (that is now easily visible and change the chart type to line:

Improving the appearance of the chart:

For the modified chart, we have:

• Removed the data series “Month” that was plotted to have more space in between bars.
• Muted the color tone of horizontal grid lines, so that we can focus on data rather then grid lines.
• Muted the overall tone of the chart – used light colors instead of shocking red.
• Markers in green turned to round and gray in the new chart.
• Added a title to the chart.

That was it – we now have our new combination chart!

Yet another option to plot the data – using LN() to plot log values:

What we considered in the preceding lines was a data from a business report, if we have been using “scientific data” and our audience has that mathematics background, we can plot the log values instead of actual values for sales volume and No. of visitors using the function LN():

We can see that though we have not used any secondary axis, the values are visible and we can see a trend in them as well – but this should be done keeping in view the understandability of the target audience.

This is all for this post, please downloads the sample file for practice.

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