Improvements have been made to the Geography data types in Excel. This video shows how Excel will detect if you are entering geography and encourage you to try out the geography data types. Improvements to the data card allow you to add new columns directly from the card. Also - an explanation of how other cells in the column will help Excel to determine which city you mean.
Transcript of the video:
Learn Excel from MrExcel podcast episode 2276.
Enhancements Geography Data Types.
Hey welcome back everyone. I’m Bill Jelen from MrExcel. I was out at the MVP summit last week and some cool new enhancements to the geography and stock data types back here.
Had a meeting with the people in pro—in charge with these, the data types. I’ve learned some great stuff about how these working.
You know, we’re still hopeful. Hopeful that at some point in the future these will expand a little bit. We’ll get some more… more possibilities for data types including, I’m hoping the chance to define your own data types which will just be amazing. But here, check this out.
So I have a table here with Minneapolis, Milwaukee and then I’ll do Chicago and press Enter and this new button pops up here. It says convert to geography. Writes up your back to your Home tab, you have no idea what the heck geography is. They’re kind of, you know, encouraging you to choose convert to geography so I’ll do a couple more here and chose that.
Now, notice that this was already a table.
If it wasn’t a table, they currently have a bug where they will say, “Hey, we don’t know what city, city is.” The heading kind of fools them a little bit. So, I don’t like to use tables. In this case, definitely use tables. And then another cool improvement here is if I get to the card and I’ve, in the past, I’ve said the card is pretty useless because it’s just this floating box. But now we have the ability on the card to add the population to the grid or to add any field to the grid. Alright so might have been that make this card far more useful because now I can use that card to see the data that’s available and when I see something I like, I can actually just choose it and it will get added to the list.
Alright. Today, right now, I just flew in to Milwaukee because I’m doing a seminar in Milwaukee tomorrow March 28th actually I’ll post this, so today March 28th and cool thing that I learned here about how data type work is let’s take the city Madison.
And when I say Madison, most people think of Madison, Wisconsin, the only city in the United States built on an isthmus. How cool is that. But you know, there’s other Madison’s.
There’s a Madison in Florida. And how does Excel decide. I’m talking about the Madison in Wisconsin or the Madison in Florida. I used to think it was choosing the largest one. But that is not true. So here, if I come here to data, this Madison us surrounded by other cities in Wisconsin. So when I choose geography, they are going to choose the one in Wisconsin. All of these are Wisconsin states here. We’ll add county and so it gets the one in Dane County, Wisconsin. Cool.
But over here, what I have is a list of cities in Florida, Orlando, Miami, you know everyone knows these cities, not many people are aware of tiny little Madison, Florida population like 2,400 or something like that. It’s a small place. So now when I choose geography, because it’s surrounded by other cities in Florida, when I add in, let’s say, a state, it’s getting it, right. So that’s how they decide you know, we’re looking for tiny little county, Madison, Florida in Madison County Florida. It looks at the other and around it. Now, if we just want to get a completely blank cell out here in the middle of nowhere and type in Madison, they will have no idea you know, because there’s no other cells around here. They won’t really know what type to use and I’m going to guess, I’m going to guess we’re going to get Madison, Wisconsin. Actually they’re completely closed. They don’t even know what Madison it is. So you really need some other cities around it in order for the data types to have a sense of which one to use. So Madison Wisconsin, Madison New York, Madison Illinois, Madison Indiana. All sorts of different Madison’s there. So without the surrounding cells to kind of give it some context to give it a clue, it’s likely that you’re going to end up here in the, “Hey we need help with this text.” If you like what you see here, please down below the video, click subscribe, and then after you subscribe, ring that bell. That will give you notifications when more videos come out. I want to thank you for watching.
Check out my new book, MrExcel LX, my 60th book the holy grail of Excel tips now available at MrExcel. Click that “i” on the top right hand corner.
Hey, I want to thank you for stopping by.
We’ll see you next time for another netcast from MrExcel.
Enhancements Geography Data Types.
Hey welcome back everyone. I’m Bill Jelen from MrExcel. I was out at the MVP summit last week and some cool new enhancements to the geography and stock data types back here.
Had a meeting with the people in pro—in charge with these, the data types. I’ve learned some great stuff about how these working.
You know, we’re still hopeful. Hopeful that at some point in the future these will expand a little bit. We’ll get some more… more possibilities for data types including, I’m hoping the chance to define your own data types which will just be amazing. But here, check this out.
So I have a table here with Minneapolis, Milwaukee and then I’ll do Chicago and press Enter and this new button pops up here. It says convert to geography. Writes up your back to your Home tab, you have no idea what the heck geography is. They’re kind of, you know, encouraging you to choose convert to geography so I’ll do a couple more here and chose that.
Now, notice that this was already a table.
If it wasn’t a table, they currently have a bug where they will say, “Hey, we don’t know what city, city is.” The heading kind of fools them a little bit. So, I don’t like to use tables. In this case, definitely use tables. And then another cool improvement here is if I get to the card and I’ve, in the past, I’ve said the card is pretty useless because it’s just this floating box. But now we have the ability on the card to add the population to the grid or to add any field to the grid. Alright so might have been that make this card far more useful because now I can use that card to see the data that’s available and when I see something I like, I can actually just choose it and it will get added to the list.
Alright. Today, right now, I just flew in to Milwaukee because I’m doing a seminar in Milwaukee tomorrow March 28th actually I’ll post this, so today March 28th and cool thing that I learned here about how data type work is let’s take the city Madison.
And when I say Madison, most people think of Madison, Wisconsin, the only city in the United States built on an isthmus. How cool is that. But you know, there’s other Madison’s.
There’s a Madison in Florida. And how does Excel decide. I’m talking about the Madison in Wisconsin or the Madison in Florida. I used to think it was choosing the largest one. But that is not true. So here, if I come here to data, this Madison us surrounded by other cities in Wisconsin. So when I choose geography, they are going to choose the one in Wisconsin. All of these are Wisconsin states here. We’ll add county and so it gets the one in Dane County, Wisconsin. Cool.
But over here, what I have is a list of cities in Florida, Orlando, Miami, you know everyone knows these cities, not many people are aware of tiny little Madison, Florida population like 2,400 or something like that. It’s a small place. So now when I choose geography, because it’s surrounded by other cities in Florida, when I add in, let’s say, a state, it’s getting it, right. So that’s how they decide you know, we’re looking for tiny little county, Madison, Florida in Madison County Florida. It looks at the other and around it. Now, if we just want to get a completely blank cell out here in the middle of nowhere and type in Madison, they will have no idea you know, because there’s no other cells around here. They won’t really know what type to use and I’m going to guess, I’m going to guess we’re going to get Madison, Wisconsin. Actually they’re completely closed. They don’t even know what Madison it is. So you really need some other cities around it in order for the data types to have a sense of which one to use. So Madison Wisconsin, Madison New York, Madison Illinois, Madison Indiana. All sorts of different Madison’s there. So without the surrounding cells to kind of give it some context to give it a clue, it’s likely that you’re going to end up here in the, “Hey we need help with this text.” If you like what you see here, please down below the video, click subscribe, and then after you subscribe, ring that bell. That will give you notifications when more videos come out. I want to thank you for watching.
Check out my new book, MrExcel LX, my 60th book the holy grail of Excel tips now available at MrExcel. Click that “i” on the top right hand corner.
Hey, I want to thank you for stopping by.
We’ll see you next time for another netcast from MrExcel.
