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ExcelHash participants discuss lessons learned and memorable moments.
#ExcelHash #Excel #microsoftexcel
Buy Bill Jelen's latest Excel book: MrExcel 2022 Boosting Excel
You can help my channel by clicking Like or commenting below: Why clicking Like on a YouTube video helps my channel
#excel
#microsoft
#exceltutorial
#exceltips
#microsoftexcel
#exceltricks
Transcript of the video:
[ MrExcel: ] Live.
[ Oz du Soleil: ] All right, everybody. Okay, so five of us are here, five of the 17 participants from Excel Hash 2021, and I'm standing here in my friend's kitchen because I have no power at my place. So we're going to do this. We're going to have some fun and we're going to talk about Excel Hash, what we got out of it, what were some memorable moments, what were some challenges, anything else anybody has to share? All right. Bill, what do you have to say? What's on your mind?
[ MrExcel: ] Well, this is my third go round on Excel Hash. Never finished out of the basement. Maybe fifth place out of six one time. So I just said, "Well, I'm going to have some fun, I guess." [ Oz du Soleil: ] Yeah. [ MrExcel: ] Yeah, right?
[ Oz du Soleil: ] You did have some fun. [ MrExcel: ] I did have some fun with the ISEVEN function, which wasn't the right function. I was supposed to use the EVEN function, but you said even I just heard ISEVEN, so that sent me off. And once I had that joke that I was going to mispronounce it because- [ Oz du Soleil: ] ISEVEN.
[ MrExcel: ] In every Excel Hash so far, there's been some disagreement on how to pronounce things like last year, the XOR Function. You call it the...
[ Oz du Soleil: ] ZOR. [ MrExcel: ] Yeah, right. Is it ZOR or XOR? I don't know. I honestly don't know.
[ Oz du Soleil: ] Then other people call it exclusive or.
[ MrExcel: ] Yeah, those are people that have a lot of syllables to waste.
[ Oz du Soleil: ] Right. Yeah, profligate is what that's called.
[ MrExcel: ] What's it called? [ Oz du Soleil: ] Profligate.
[ MrExcel: ] That's a word I've never heard. I hope that's not an Excel function, is it?
[ Frederic: ] It's not an Excel. [ Oz du Soleil: ] No, no.
[ Faraz: ] Speak English, please. [ MrExcel: ] Yeah, right.
[ Oz du Soleil: ] Right. [ MrExcel: ] And then the other one, the secret function in Excel. This was a couple of years ago, date diff. Is it date diff or is it a dated iff?
[ Oz du Soleil: ] Right. [ MrExcel: ] It's Date Diff in my world.
[ Oz du Soleil: ] Date difference. [ MrExcel: ] So after those pronunciation things, I was like, "Well yeah, we're just going to have some fun and go ISEVEN instead of IS EVEN." [ Oz du Soleil: ] Yeah, you had some fun. Yeah. So Faraz, what did you get out of doing the challenge? [ Faraz: ] Okay. So there are a lot of things on journey of preparing this and even watching our fellow friends. I got to learn a lot of new things which never been experienced like the slicers. And when I was preparing this, it was my second take. So the first take was going through Excel from Windows going into the web version and then coming into the Mac. But somewhere around in the Mac when I came, I hit Power Query, refreshed the data type, it just blew off. Then I said, "This has to be fixed up." Then again, I reshooted my entire stuff and it was fun. It was really fun. The EVEN function was really thinking it in the real life, how it could work. It was really amazing. Interesting experience.
[ MrExcel: ] So for us, do you live on the Mac? Is the Mac your primary computer?
[ Faraz: ] Yes, my Mac is the primary. I use Parallels to shoot my videos. But most of my Excel videos, I prepare it on Mac only. When I have to do some Power Query stuff, I just switch it to Windows. [ MrExcel: ] I gotcha. Yeah.
[ Faraz: ] Power Query Index. [ Oz du Soleil: ] Gotcha. And Fred, what was the challenge like for you? [ Frederic: ] First, it was to find a scenario to manage all this crazy functions and of course like everyone, I struggled to use EVEN, but since I find the ID, I do my video immediately. So this is why I was the first one because I don't want to lose the ID. So for those who haven't seen my video, I have used EVEN to manage that with conditional formatting to color or not to color the male and female, and not do alternative row. Also, I have downloaded all the data from a real database and also that's what I have included. It was not a part of the challenge, but to load the data from SQL Server. I should do a video about that because I know there is a lot of question because people are struggling with CSV file. So I'm going to show how you can directly connect to a database and it's very easy with Power Query. [ Oz du Soleil: ] You and Paula both used real data?
[ Frederic: ] Yes. [ Oz du Soleil: ] That was interesting. Yeah.
[ Frederic: ] I just changed the first name. I had in fact two years of working time on this challenge where I have something like 13,000 rows, sorry. And yes, it was real data. And if you look at the video, I just have the first name, not the name, I hide the name just to be sure that it was secure data.
[ Oz du Soleil: ] Right. And Cristiano, what'd you get from it?
[ Cristiano: ] I got a real problem to solve, but first of all, I thought, who had this idea to use EVEN? My first thinking, who used this function because I never used before and I almost gave up, but I thought Oz organizing this together with you in the organization. I can't disappoint them. I have to make an extra effort because I don't have my own [ inaudible 00:05:57 ] to say, "Oh, I'm dropping." I have to move on. And then my main challenge was to discover what kind of real problem we could solve that needs to get a number. And when it's odd, we have to transform in the next even.
And I searched all the internet and had to figure out what to do with the function and I found out there is a problem, it's a real problem for those who haven't watched the video. You can go to Excel Turbo to see, and there is a problem that for some guys may sound funny at the first moment, but it's not. There is a kind of women's clothes accessories that they sell only even. And if the measure is 37, for example, it goes to 38 and then we use EVEN function. And the rest, it was easier to come up with the idea, but not so easy to combine the ingredients because they are a little bit random, but I got to solve something using the ingredients. This one was fun.
[ Oz du Soleil: ] Yeah. And I'm glad you didn't drop out and found something, but I didn't know. I never thought to go online to try to find out some true, real world need for this. Many of us made up a scenario. Then you had the others who did use it, use even for the conditional formatting. A few people did that, but yours was truly real world.
[ Cristiano: ] Yes, it is. Yes. [ Oz du Soleil: ] Yeah.
[ Cristiano: ] I tried to- [ Faraz: ] It was a real business case.
[ Oz du Soleil: ] Hmm? [ Faraz: ] It was a true business case.
[ MrExcel: ] It was the most plausible use of EVEN. Actual, not just made up.
[ Oz du Soleil: ] Right, yeah. [ Cristiano: ] It was fun because I had to read about something that I never read before. I had to understand about something totally new to- [ Oz du Soleil: ] To hear about bras. [ Cristiano: ] Yeah.
[ Oz du Soleil: ] It's a serious thing because I've ran a nonprofit for four years that collected and distributed bras, and bras and socks are the two hardest things for homeless people to find. It is a serious issue. So it sounds funny on the face of it, but then you get into it and it's not so funny. [ Cristiano: ] Yeah, maybe for two young people, they may see it, "Hey, what is this spreadsheet?" But we have a problem and we have a solution. And that's it. That's it. [ Oz du Soleil: ] Exactly, exactly.
[ Cristiano: ] We have some comments here. [ Oz du Soleil: ] Okay.
[ Cristiano: ] I can see we have Claudia Roxo saying that, "Cristiano, your video was the first one I saw from the contest and found it really interesting and useful." I'm glad to see a woman saying this because it was not easy to find the best approach to make the video without sounding... Maybe some people may feel a little uncomfortable, but I think this is the comment that I am very glad to see. And we have somebody here, we have Cristian Angel, we have- [ Oz du Soleil: ] From Romania.
[ Cristiano: ] Yeah. [ Oz du Soleil: ] Yeah.
[ Cristiano: ] In Romania. Everyone who is watching now, you can say you are Hello and say the place as well that I will highlight you here.
[ Faraz: ] Yes, Cristian. [ Oz du Soleil: ] Cristian, good to see you here.
[ Cristiano: ] Yeah. Cabanas. [ Oz du Soleil: ] Yeah. Alexandre. [ Portuguese 00:10:22 ]. Alexandre is a good guy.
[ Cristiano: ] Happy birthday, Bill. [ MrExcel: ] Thanks, Marcelo.
[ Cristiano: ] Bill, if only I wished you a birthday with an EVEN function. Easy.
[ MrExcel: ] Yeah, that's right. It is my birthday if you send my birthday into the EVEN function. We said we'd never use EVEN again, but here today.
[ Oz du Soleil: ] Oh yeah, and that was Win Hopkins's comment is said, "Never used it, never will again." [ Faraz: ] Right.
[ Oz du Soleil: ] Yeah. I think that's all of us, right?
[ Frederic: ] Yes, definitely. [ Oz du Soleil: ] Ligia.
[ Frederic: ] Yes, definitely because modular is much simpler, it's easier to use than EVEN or odd. So modular is the perfect function to use. [ Cristiano: ] Yeah, right.
[ Oz du Soleil: ] Right. And that's the challenge, and that's the exciting thing for me is looking for really the essence of what the function does. Because if I can think of three other things, then what is still different about this one different from those other three? That makes it really hard.
[ Frederic: ] Your idea to use a Lambda function was great because it's a new one and you can do a lot of stuff with it, but EVEN believe it or not, what a nightmare.
[ Oz du Soleil: ] And I think, Bill, I think came up with Lambda.
[ MrExcel: ] Yeah. Because it was new, right? [ Oz du Soleil: ] Yeah.
[ MrExcel: ] Had a good chance to try something out. Lambda and let.
[ Oz du Soleil: ] Yep. Lambda and let. [ MrExcel: ] I saw some great Lambdas. Someone returned a picture via Lambda. I was like, "Whoa, never thought about doing that." [ Oz du Soleil: ] Todd Singer. [ MrExcel: ] Todd Singer. How you doing, Todd?
[ Oz du Soleil: ] All right. [ Cristiano: ] From Indianapolis.
[ Oz du Soleil: ] Yeah. It was pretty neat to see how many people used Lambda to retrieve the image.
[ MrExcel: ] Yeah. I never realized that was a thing. And I was working on a new book and I threw that, that's like the last topic in the book, how to return an image via Lambda. So I stole that from Excel Hash. I should pay some royalty or something, right?
[ Oz du Soleil: ] Yeah. There was a lot to learn here, like John Michaloudis's slicers.
[ MrExcel: ] Oh yeah. [ Oz du Soleil: ] That was really cool.
[ MrExcel: ] Changing the slicers. That was cool. [ Oz du Soleil: ] Yeah.
[ MrExcel: ] Absolutely, right. Yeah. So Oz, what'd you get out of Excel Hash?
[ Oz du Soleil: ] Yep. And David Benay... What did I? Thinking about what things really do. Because as I said already about seeing a bunch of different ways to do the same thing, but then I've got to justify this one. I don't want to have somebody come back and say, "Oh, you could have done this so much simpler." So it's a real brainteaser to think about what does this thing actually do that's different from this thing that's like it? What's the difference between max and large? And then you throw ceiling in there. So things that do something similar, but they still have their own way that they're different.
[ MrExcel: ] Right, yeah. Large can get the second largest. Max always just gets the max.
[ Oz du Soleil: ] Right. [ MrExcel: ] Yeah, right. Yeah.
[ Oz du Soleil: ] Yeah. [ MrExcel: ] That's good. I know Oz, you've been a storyteller and improv and you've done all these theatrical kinds of things. So did that influence your idea for Excel Hash with the underworld and having to bribe people to get fresh water and all that? It was a very cinematic video, right? [ Oz du Soleil: ] Right, definitely.
Okay, so here's how I approached my video. The first year, we all did these long, detailed videos that seemed to **** all of us off. We all said, we're not doing that again. And it wasn't necessary because once somebody has explained the ingredients, it's no reason to listen to a bunch of other people explain them again. So my video wound up being about nine minutes longer than I expected, but it was more theatrical and I felt okay about that because I was not getting down into the weeds of the stuff. I figured folks watch enough videos, they'll get a sense of what is EVEN. And then I had the choice of the four, the Lambda, let, dynamic arrays and something else, and I used the let and dynamic arrays. So I just made a movie and didn't get into the how to. Yeah.
[ MrExcel: ] Yeah. [ Frederic: ] You're not the only one. Win Kent also did that. He just plays a scenario and how he makes a different video.
[ Oz du Soleil: ] Yeah, he just did the demo. Yeah. And I've watched The Book of Eli a few times and I liked that view of things and I wondered what other kind of jobs would be in that world. So I just developed this whole little movie and just did a demo.
[ Frederic: ] Yeah, it was great. [ Cristiano: ] I like the effects of that part of the eye. [ Oz du Soleil: ] Of the eye.
[ Cristiano: ] Like a horror movie, something like that.
[ Oz du Soleil: ] Yep, yep, yep. [ Faraz: ] The last part was quite scary. Just he comes and he just brings his sword in like this and swings the sword.
[ Cristiano: ] And he uses soundtracks and effects too. So it's not only about the video, but the sound part of the video. I like that.
[ Oz du Soleil: ] And a lot of it is too, thinking about watching a Key and Peele sketch, it builds to something. There's a punchline in the end, so I couldn't just demo it and say, "Okay, thanks a lot." And then be done. I wanted it to build to a boom. So that storytelling, that's sketch writing. Yeah. [ Frederic: ] Yeah.
[ Oz du Soleil: ] So all of that was in there and it was pretty neat to be able to focus on that once I got my solution built. And I'm taking a comedy writing class on Saturdays online, and that's helping me in addition to the shows I've been in for storytelling and whatnot.
[ MrExcel: ] Yeah, that's great. That's awesome. [ Oz du Soleil: ] Yeah, thanks.
[ MrExcel: ] Not just straight Excel, but something outside of Excel.
[ Oz du Soleil: ] Yeah. And I had my first paid video editing gig back in October.
[ MrExcel: ] Oh really? [ Oz du Soleil: ] Yeah, yeah.
[ Cristiano: ] That's good. [ MrExcel: ] That's cool. Wow.
[ Oz du Soleil: ] Yeah, it was. I enjoyed it.
[ MrExcel: ] You should be a Camtasia MVP or something, right?
[ Oz du Soleil: ] Yeah. I was surprised that they know me.
[ MrExcel: ] Oh, they know All of us. [ Frederic: ] He's a DJ now too.
[ Cristiano: ] Unrelated to Excel. Nothing with Excel.
[ Oz du Soleil: ] No. [ Frederic: ] You did an interview for TechSmith long time ago, no? [ Oz du Soleil: ] Me?
[ Faraz: ] And he was there.
[ Oz du Soleil: ] Yeah. I did a livestream conversation with somebody from TechSmith where we were discussing video length, how caught up should a person be about the length of their videos. Do you all think about that when you're making videos for YouTube?
[ Frederic: ] Yeah, but I remember you have shared a link long time ago, maybe one or two years ago. Yeah, I remember you've been... It's so to see you be- [ Faraz: ] I think you might be talking about Oz with this course maybe?
[ Oz du Soleil: ] No, no, no, no. I did a livestream discussion with somebody from TechSmith a few months ago, maybe back in the summer. [ MrExcel: ] So are we all Camtasia or is someone using something different other than Camtasia for your YouTube videos?
[ Faraz: ] Camtasia. [ MrExcel: ] Camtasia?
[ Faraz: ] Camtasia for Mac. [ MrExcel: ] Oh my God. You and the Mac.
[ Cristiano: ] Cristian is telling that he watches the movie after seeing your video. [ MrExcel: ] Amazing.
[ Oz du Soleil: ] Oh, cool. [ Cristiano: ] The Book of Eli.
[ Oz du Soleil: ] Oh, okay. Okay. All right, thanks Cristian. Yeah.
[ Cristiano: ] Yeah. [ Oz du Soleil: ] Wow.
[ Cristiano: ] We have some words from David Aubert. Hi.
[ Frederic: ] Hi, David. [ Oz du Soleil: ] Happy birthday for Bill Jelen.
[ MrExcel: ] Yeah, thanks. [ Frederic: ] I don't know how many people is watching, but maybe I have something to propose. Does they have an idea maybe to include next year in the Excel Hash? It could be fun that we ask the audience.
[ MrExcel: ] What crazy ingredients should we use next time?
[ Frederic: ] Yeah. I know there is a function. I have a question for all my friends. It's square pi. How do you use this function, square pi?
[ MrExcel: ] Oh my God, I have a story about that. [ Oz du Soleil: ] Okay, okay.
[ Frederic: ] I have tried to make a lot of research. Impossible find how to use it.
[ MrExcel: ] I used to talk in my live seminar about the functions that I couldn't find any use for. Fact double was one and that square root of pi, and I was in Springfield, Missouri, which doesn't mean anything to you, Fred. It's just in the middle of the country and a whole bunch of people from in town, like 200 people were there. It was a big, big seminar for me. And there's a company in Springfield, Missouri that makes underground tanks for oil or water or whatever. And a guy in the back row, he stood up, he says, "Oh no, we use that all the time." When you have a round tank and you need to fit as much liquid as a square tank, he had some formula that would convert a square tank to a round tank or a cylindrical tank using square root of pi. Now, how did that ever make it into Excel? How did that become a thing in Excel? But here was one guy, one guy in Springfield, Missouri who's like, "Oh yeah, I use that all the time." [ Frederic: ] Springfield, Missouri. Is it Homer Simpson?
[ MrExcel: ] Yeah, it was one of the Springfields. So we don't know which Springfield it is. [ Frederic: ] If I know Springfield, it's just because there is the Simpsons. That's all. [ MrExcel: ] Right.
[ Oz du Soleil: ] Right, yeah. But that's interesting, and that is one thing when I've gone through to look at the functions, I don't want to come up with something so weird to where now you got to go get an engineering degree or something in order to do anything with it like kurtosis. [ MrExcel: ] Yeah.
[ Oz du Soleil: ] The KURT function. [ MrExcel: ] The Bessel functions, equal Bessel I, Bessel J, what the heck? Right? [ Frederic: ] Right.
[ MrExcel: ] How would we ever do anything with that?
[ Oz du Soleil: ] Yeah, yeah. So Fred was suggesting about how to pick ingredients for next year.
[ Frederic: ] Yeah, but ask to the people, or maybe do a poll.
[ Faraz: ] You can get it in the chat, people can- [ Frederic: ] We have one year.
[ Oz du Soleil: ] Well, the challenge is, and that's what happened, we did that the first year and we had this whole long thing that then I would set up a randomizer for four, and every time I hit it, it came up with something that already goes together. So you got an if, a pivot table, conditioning formatting, and sum. Well, we could just go pull anything off our files and submit that. So then I had to think about it some more and then we wound up with frequency in there and the 3D model.
[ MrExcel: ] 3D model, I've never used a 3D model since Excel Hash. One of those things that you used it once and then it's like, "All right, I know it's there. I'm never going to use it again." [ Frederic: ] But honestly... Sorry, Oz But this year, the cutout person was a very good idea because honestly, I never use the cutout people, but it gave me a lot of new idea for my next presentation. So this year, honestly, cutout people was a great idea and I'm sure it's going to give a lot of value for other people. It was great.
[ MrExcel: ] Especially when they're holding the sign, right?
[ Frederic: ] Yeah. [ Oz du Soleil: ] Yeah.
[ MrExcel: ] Where you could put the words in that. [ Oz du Soleil: ] Yeah.
[ Faraz: ] That was a very interesting trend. [ Oz du Soleil: ] And Paula did a good job with that, with the dynamic text. Yeah. And that's something else that's come out of this is seeing how other people use Excel, seeing how other people think and then be, "Oh, okay, I can actually use that for something." [ Frederic: ] The solution, it was shown to you automatically or randomly it changes. The picture was great.
[ Faraz: ] Yes, right. [ Frederic: ] This one was great, I think.
[ Oz du Soleil: ] Yeah. That was the 3D model, I use those when I'm editing video, because I can go and get a bee and put it on a green slide in PowerPoint and move that bee around and then bring it over into Camtasia, get rid of the green and have a bee sitting right there.
[ MrExcel: ] Oh, and it flies around your Excel screen then?
[ Oz du Soleil: ] Yeah. [ MrExcel: ] Nice.
[ Oz du Soleil: ] I've used a beating heart, the skeleton, shark, all kinds of 3D models, but in Camtasia. [ MrExcel: ] Right, yeah.
[ Oz du Soleil: ] Yeah. [ MrExcel: ] That's a great idea.
[ Oz du Soleil: ] Yeah.
[ MrExcel: ] Is it a certain green? Does it have to be a certain green or any green?
[ Oz du Soleil: ] No, it has to be a color that there's nothing else that's the color of.
[ MrExcel: ] Okay. [ Oz du Soleil: ] So you could make it gold, but as long as you don't have something else on the screen that's gold, it's fine.
[ MrExcel: ] I never used that [ inaudible 00:25:24 ]- [ Faraz: ] You use that visual effect, right? When we add that with the visual effects, you record it and then you add the visual effects?
[ Oz du Soleil: ] I record it and then I take that clip and put it into Camtasia, yeah.
[ Faraz: ] Yes. And then you add it in. [ Oz du Soleil: ] And then remove color. It's that remove color feature. [ Faraz: ] Yes.
[ Oz du Soleil: ] Yeah. I use remove color a lot. [ Faraz: ] That's cool.
[ Oz du Soleil: ] Yeah. So I guess any closing thoughts about Excel Hash 2021 before we finally put it to rest and look toward '22? [ Faraz: ] So first of all, I would like to say thank you Oz and Bill, sir, both of you. Really appreciate your time. You have given [ inaudible 00:26:11 ] this video, everyone's video and have come up and it's great you have that and this is what I'd like to thank. And the last word, we will be seeing soon in the next challenge 2022. And that's all I have to say from my side.
[ Oz du Soleil: ] Thanks, thanks. Fred? [ Frederic: ] Yeah. What?
[ Oz du Soleil: ] Any closing thoughts about Excel Hash 2021? You said it all.
[ Frederic: ] But for me, it was a challenge too far. Like I said earlier, it was a challenge to find an idea to mix all this feature altogether because I want to find something useful and not just a factor to play with the different ingredients, but also really like what the others did because each one of us put something on the table and like you mentioned in your video, or Bill and you, it was great. We all had great idea to find the way to mix all this ingredient. So I really like all the solutions. It's difficult to find which one is the best because I really like the one of John Campura with the table. [ Oz du Soleil: ] Yes.
[ Frederic: ] This one was great. [ Oz du Soleil: ] Yeah, it is hard to find some winner. So Bill and I, in the background, we had just joked around with the idea of a best this, best that versus an overall best. [ Frederic: ] [ inaudible 00:27:40 ] not be the winner. [ Oz du Soleil: ] Hmm?
[ Frederic: ] Seriously, I was very glad to not be one of the winner because I don't know how I can use it in France. [ MrExcel: ] We would've changed the prize for you. You would've got a $100 worth of croissants or something.
[ Frederic: ] Another winner. [ Oz du Soleil: ] Yeah.
[ Cristiano: ] I lost the connection, but I could hear a little about somebody that made a solution that we like a lot. And I saw John MacDougall with that thing of automation and automated. Great, great. There's a guy here, David Aubert, telling that he would like to see Office Script in the next. Take a look on the 16th video, there's something.
[ Faraz: ] The next Excel Hash. [ Cristiano: ] Exactly. It's trying to complicate.
[ Oz du Soleil: ] Yeah, this is interesting. This is interesting, right?
[ MrExcel: ] It's interesting, yeah. [ Oz du Soleil: ] Because- [ Faraz: ] It's entirely on the web. [ Oz du Soleil: ] This is interesting because I don't want to get into coding, that's why we took VBA off the table. But the idea of Excel on the web, that's available to people to use, nobody used it though.
[ MrExcel: ] Well, no, no. John MacDougall did. He was all on- [ Oz du Soleil: ] John MacDougall. John MacDougall, okay. [ MrExcel: ] Yeah.
[ Oz du Soleil: ] Okay, right. Yes, yes. You commented on that. Yeah.
[ Cristiano: ] The last video of the playlist. The last one.
[ Oz du Soleil: ] Yeah. Yeah. [ Cristiano: ] Brilliant, brilliant.
[ Oz du Soleil: ] Yes, it was. It was. I agree. Brilliant.
[ MrExcel: ] I don't know. Before we do Excel Online, why don't we do Excel for the Commodore 64 or something? You only had 256 rows by 12 columns. See what you could do there. [ Oz du Soleil: ] Wow, wow.
[ MrExcel: ] Oh, Excel Online. That would be a real challenge. I would almost rather do Excel on the Mac. [ Oz du Soleil: ] Wow.
[ Frederic: ] There is one trick. It's how to insert a slicer on Excel Online. It's possible, but it's very not easy to find where it is. For those who are listening, you have to do a right click on the field and it's only there that you have add as a slicer, otherwise you cannot find the option.
[ MrExcel: ] That was David's comment, right? [ Frederic: ] Yeah.
[ MrExcel: ] David, I congratulate you for giving five people heartburn with doing Excel Online.
[ Oz du Soleil: ] It's not even noon here, and I already got some glyco... But I need to thank Bill for having wound up being like a co-producer of this thing. I didn't expect that, but I appreciated all the help in the background and thanks. Thanks for Cristiano for helping with this livestream and appreciate all the participants. Faraz, Fred, Paula, John Campura.
[ Frederic: ] Can I see all the comments? [ Oz du Soleil: ] We had several Johns. Huh?
[ MrExcel: ] Yeah. [ Cristiano: ] We have Wayne from California.
[ Oz du Soleil: ] Oh, Wayne. [ MrExcel: ] Hey, Wayne. This is awesome.
[ Oz du Soleil: ] Yeah, yeah. [ Cristiano: ] [ inaudible 00:30:53 ] NASA.
[ Oz du Soleil: ] Guys, I appreciate it. I appreciate it all.
[ MrExcel: ] We're ready to watch the Mars Landing next. That's our next schedule.
[ Frederic: ] That's a good comment. It's also live in France. We're following that each minute, so it should be landing in one hour and 15 minutes, something like that.
[ Oz du Soleil: ] Ah, okay. Mars, yeah. [ Frederic: ] I'm sure that Bill Jelen takes some inspiration from NASA to make some crazy solutions and complex stuff.
[ Oz du Soleil: ] Well, the first year was a real one. Was that Benin or?
[ MrExcel: ] Bennu. [ Oz du Soleil: ] Bennu.
[ MrExcel: ] Asteroid Bennu. Yeah, right. That was a NASA project. And since then, don't get me started. Since then, they've actually gone and they touched down on Bennu and they collected some rocks and they're sending them back. It'll take a couple of years to get back here, but that was an interesting landing, trying to land on something pretty small, but they did a great job. [ Oz du Soleil: ] Yeah. Wow.
[ MrExcel: ] Although- [ Oz du Soleil: ] Cristiano... Yeah, go ahead.
[ MrExcel: ] It was gripping. When they collected the stuff, it was supposed to close. The door was supposed to close, it didn't close. And so all this debris and dust from the asteroid is falling out, and so they had to change their plans and close it up real fast before it all leaked out into space. So we think it's a foregone conclusion they're going to land on Mars today. There's a lot of stuff that can go wrong and it's so far away. So it'll be interesting to see what happens today with that Mars landing. They make them look easy. [ Cristiano: ] Even the photography can go wrong on time. [ Oz du Soleil: ] A couple years to get back.
[ MrExcel: ] Yeah, right. Yeah. All kinds of things. All kinds of things.
[ Cristiano: ] Even the photography can go wrong. It's not easy.
[ MrExcel: ] A year ago, there was lander from Israel that was going to land on the moon and it got there, all these eight orbits around the earth and it got there and the computer rebooted on the way down. And during that reboot, crashed into the moon because it didn't turn on its thrusters. So I hope it wasn't Windows. I hope it wasn't a Windows computer that caused that.
[ Oz du Soleil: ] Right, right. [ MrExcel: ] Linux or something.
[ Oz du Soleil: ] Wow. [ MrExcel: ] Yeah.
[ Oz du Soleil: ] Yeah. [ Frederic: ] So I never told you this story- [ Oz du Soleil: ] Cristiano, any closing thoughts? And then we'll get to Bill and then we get out of here. All right. Cristiano?
[ Cristiano: ] I see people being encouraged by the challenge, trying to make at home, their own solutions. We have one guy here from a comment right there on the beginning. And this is awesome, the work that you guys, thanks to your initiative. This is inspiring people to try to push the boundaries to be better in Excel. And this is fantastic. I see that they are trying to invent something. I saw a guy publishing his own video, even not on the list of the competitor participant. [ MrExcel: ] Oh, that's cool.
[ Oz du Soleil: ] Yes. There was a guy, I shared it. [ Cristiano: ] Yeah, on LinkedIn.
[ MrExcel: ] He was on LinkedIn. [ Oz du Soleil: ] Yes. It was really good.
[ Cristiano: ] He just decided, okay, I'm making the challenge too. Here's my video. Excel Hash.
[ Oz du Soleil: ] Yep. [ MrExcel: ] Sweet. That's awesome.
[ Oz du Soleil: ] It was beautiful. [ MrExcel: ] That's awesome.
[ Oz du Soleil: ] It was beautiful. Yep. [ Cristiano: ] Thanks. This is really awesome. Not only because Excel, I can talk because of my case, I had to find information about another problem and this make us to think outside the box, so thank you very much. And it was fun.
[ Frederic: ] Even for us. [ Cristiano: ] Thanks.
[ Frederic: ] Even for us. [ Oz du Soleil: ] And I'll say part of it comes from when I was in art school and seeing the students use stuff the wrong way or doing weird stuff. And one thing, I took a class on making pottery. You get the clay and everything and then put stuff in the kiln. Well, I had a whole bunch of peanut shells that I packed my piece in and it looked like when it came out of the kiln, like it was centuries old. The instructor didn't know what we were going to get, but he was always up for experimentation and it was freaky the way that happened. Then there was this other thing that made me mad. There were these two filmmakers. They took some film and put it in a crab pot and threw it in the ocean and they left it for a few days, come back and they developed the film and played it for us. And it was a lot of interesting pops and squiggles and burned things and for five minutes it was okay. 15 minutes of that started to be too much. 45 minutes later when that **** ended, I was like, "Goddammit y'all, This is abusive, this is... No." And when they came up to talk about their film afterwards, I wanted to smack them. And ask, "Why did you..." Five minutes was great. It was fascinating.
[ MrExcel: ] There's a lesson there. Your entry should not be that long. Five minutes.
[ Oz du Soleil: ] All right. And Bill, closing comments?
[ MrExcel: ] Oh yeah, I always have fun with this. I learned so much just watching all the other videos and of course being a smart ***. That's just trying to figure out how good was their use of Even, right? [ Oz du Soleil: ] Mm-hmm.
[ MrExcel: ] Did they really have a legitimate use for Even?
[ Frederic: ] Use ISEVEN, not EVEN. ISEVEN. [ MrExcel: ] Yeah, I got it completely wrong. Fred, you said, "My video's done, but you can't watch it until you're done with yours." So I didn't watch anyone else until mine was done. And then I went and watched Win. And I'm like, "Why is he using EVEN? It was ISEVEN." And then I realized when my video was done, too late. That was it, the story. So I was pretty much disqualified, although Ran Between didn't care. I still had an equal one in 17, two in 17 shot, so what the heck? Yeah, no, it was fun. It was fun. [ Oz du Soleil: ] Yeah, yeah. Nice.
[ Faraz: ] I wrapped it even into an EVEN. [ MrExcel: ] Yeah.
[ Oz du Soleil: ] Yeah. [ MrExcel: ] For us, you have the most evens in your formula of anyone. [ Cristiano: ] And finally, I have an ISEVEN [ MrExcel: ] With an ISEVEN. I wrote that down. So gold star for the most use of EVEN.
[ Oz du Soleil: ] Yeah, yeah. All right. Cool. [ MrExcel: ] Okay, that's good. Thank you. Thank you all. Thanks for being here. [ Faraz: ] Thank you.
[ Oz du Soleil: ] Thanks for the discussion and the participation, and embracing this thing that I was not sure anybody would embrace, but we got a lot out of it. And the audience as well. And thank you to the audience too. Really, really appreciate you all.
[ MrExcel: ] And hey everyone watching, double O. Like, subscribe, and ring that bell for all five of us. All five of us. Go sub to all five of us.
[ Oz du Soleil: ] All five. [ MrExcel: ] Yeah, right. All right.
[ Oz du Soleil: ] All right. [ MrExcel: ] Awesome. Thanks.
[ Oz du Soleil: ] All right. [ Frederic: ] Bye.
[ MrExcel: ] Thanks. [ Faraz: ] Cool.
[ Cristiano: ] Bye-bye, guys. [ Oz du Soleil: ] All right, thanks a lot.
[ Faraz: ] Bye. Thank you. [ Cristiano: ] Thanks for watching.
[ MrExcel: ] Bye. [ Cristiano: ] Bye.
[ Frederic: ] Thanks for watching. Bye.
[ Oz du Soleil: ] All right, everybody. Okay, so five of us are here, five of the 17 participants from Excel Hash 2021, and I'm standing here in my friend's kitchen because I have no power at my place. So we're going to do this. We're going to have some fun and we're going to talk about Excel Hash, what we got out of it, what were some memorable moments, what were some challenges, anything else anybody has to share? All right. Bill, what do you have to say? What's on your mind?
[ MrExcel: ] Well, this is my third go round on Excel Hash. Never finished out of the basement. Maybe fifth place out of six one time. So I just said, "Well, I'm going to have some fun, I guess." [ Oz du Soleil: ] Yeah. [ MrExcel: ] Yeah, right?
[ Oz du Soleil: ] You did have some fun. [ MrExcel: ] I did have some fun with the ISEVEN function, which wasn't the right function. I was supposed to use the EVEN function, but you said even I just heard ISEVEN, so that sent me off. And once I had that joke that I was going to mispronounce it because- [ Oz du Soleil: ] ISEVEN.
[ MrExcel: ] In every Excel Hash so far, there's been some disagreement on how to pronounce things like last year, the XOR Function. You call it the...
[ Oz du Soleil: ] ZOR. [ MrExcel: ] Yeah, right. Is it ZOR or XOR? I don't know. I honestly don't know.
[ Oz du Soleil: ] Then other people call it exclusive or.
[ MrExcel: ] Yeah, those are people that have a lot of syllables to waste.
[ Oz du Soleil: ] Right. Yeah, profligate is what that's called.
[ MrExcel: ] What's it called? [ Oz du Soleil: ] Profligate.
[ MrExcel: ] That's a word I've never heard. I hope that's not an Excel function, is it?
[ Frederic: ] It's not an Excel. [ Oz du Soleil: ] No, no.
[ Faraz: ] Speak English, please. [ MrExcel: ] Yeah, right.
[ Oz du Soleil: ] Right. [ MrExcel: ] And then the other one, the secret function in Excel. This was a couple of years ago, date diff. Is it date diff or is it a dated iff?
[ Oz du Soleil: ] Right. [ MrExcel: ] It's Date Diff in my world.
[ Oz du Soleil: ] Date difference. [ MrExcel: ] So after those pronunciation things, I was like, "Well yeah, we're just going to have some fun and go ISEVEN instead of IS EVEN." [ Oz du Soleil: ] Yeah, you had some fun. Yeah. So Faraz, what did you get out of doing the challenge? [ Faraz: ] Okay. So there are a lot of things on journey of preparing this and even watching our fellow friends. I got to learn a lot of new things which never been experienced like the slicers. And when I was preparing this, it was my second take. So the first take was going through Excel from Windows going into the web version and then coming into the Mac. But somewhere around in the Mac when I came, I hit Power Query, refreshed the data type, it just blew off. Then I said, "This has to be fixed up." Then again, I reshooted my entire stuff and it was fun. It was really fun. The EVEN function was really thinking it in the real life, how it could work. It was really amazing. Interesting experience.
[ MrExcel: ] So for us, do you live on the Mac? Is the Mac your primary computer?
[ Faraz: ] Yes, my Mac is the primary. I use Parallels to shoot my videos. But most of my Excel videos, I prepare it on Mac only. When I have to do some Power Query stuff, I just switch it to Windows. [ MrExcel: ] I gotcha. Yeah.
[ Faraz: ] Power Query Index. [ Oz du Soleil: ] Gotcha. And Fred, what was the challenge like for you? [ Frederic: ] First, it was to find a scenario to manage all this crazy functions and of course like everyone, I struggled to use EVEN, but since I find the ID, I do my video immediately. So this is why I was the first one because I don't want to lose the ID. So for those who haven't seen my video, I have used EVEN to manage that with conditional formatting to color or not to color the male and female, and not do alternative row. Also, I have downloaded all the data from a real database and also that's what I have included. It was not a part of the challenge, but to load the data from SQL Server. I should do a video about that because I know there is a lot of question because people are struggling with CSV file. So I'm going to show how you can directly connect to a database and it's very easy with Power Query. [ Oz du Soleil: ] You and Paula both used real data?
[ Frederic: ] Yes. [ Oz du Soleil: ] That was interesting. Yeah.
[ Frederic: ] I just changed the first name. I had in fact two years of working time on this challenge where I have something like 13,000 rows, sorry. And yes, it was real data. And if you look at the video, I just have the first name, not the name, I hide the name just to be sure that it was secure data.
[ Oz du Soleil: ] Right. And Cristiano, what'd you get from it?
[ Cristiano: ] I got a real problem to solve, but first of all, I thought, who had this idea to use EVEN? My first thinking, who used this function because I never used before and I almost gave up, but I thought Oz organizing this together with you in the organization. I can't disappoint them. I have to make an extra effort because I don't have my own [ inaudible 00:05:57 ] to say, "Oh, I'm dropping." I have to move on. And then my main challenge was to discover what kind of real problem we could solve that needs to get a number. And when it's odd, we have to transform in the next even.
And I searched all the internet and had to figure out what to do with the function and I found out there is a problem, it's a real problem for those who haven't watched the video. You can go to Excel Turbo to see, and there is a problem that for some guys may sound funny at the first moment, but it's not. There is a kind of women's clothes accessories that they sell only even. And if the measure is 37, for example, it goes to 38 and then we use EVEN function. And the rest, it was easier to come up with the idea, but not so easy to combine the ingredients because they are a little bit random, but I got to solve something using the ingredients. This one was fun.
[ Oz du Soleil: ] Yeah. And I'm glad you didn't drop out and found something, but I didn't know. I never thought to go online to try to find out some true, real world need for this. Many of us made up a scenario. Then you had the others who did use it, use even for the conditional formatting. A few people did that, but yours was truly real world.
[ Cristiano: ] Yes, it is. Yes. [ Oz du Soleil: ] Yeah.
[ Cristiano: ] I tried to- [ Faraz: ] It was a real business case.
[ Oz du Soleil: ] Hmm? [ Faraz: ] It was a true business case.
[ MrExcel: ] It was the most plausible use of EVEN. Actual, not just made up.
[ Oz du Soleil: ] Right, yeah. [ Cristiano: ] It was fun because I had to read about something that I never read before. I had to understand about something totally new to- [ Oz du Soleil: ] To hear about bras. [ Cristiano: ] Yeah.
[ Oz du Soleil: ] It's a serious thing because I've ran a nonprofit for four years that collected and distributed bras, and bras and socks are the two hardest things for homeless people to find. It is a serious issue. So it sounds funny on the face of it, but then you get into it and it's not so funny. [ Cristiano: ] Yeah, maybe for two young people, they may see it, "Hey, what is this spreadsheet?" But we have a problem and we have a solution. And that's it. That's it. [ Oz du Soleil: ] Exactly, exactly.
[ Cristiano: ] We have some comments here. [ Oz du Soleil: ] Okay.
[ Cristiano: ] I can see we have Claudia Roxo saying that, "Cristiano, your video was the first one I saw from the contest and found it really interesting and useful." I'm glad to see a woman saying this because it was not easy to find the best approach to make the video without sounding... Maybe some people may feel a little uncomfortable, but I think this is the comment that I am very glad to see. And we have somebody here, we have Cristian Angel, we have- [ Oz du Soleil: ] From Romania.
[ Cristiano: ] Yeah. [ Oz du Soleil: ] Yeah.
[ Cristiano: ] In Romania. Everyone who is watching now, you can say you are Hello and say the place as well that I will highlight you here.
[ Faraz: ] Yes, Cristian. [ Oz du Soleil: ] Cristian, good to see you here.
[ Cristiano: ] Yeah. Cabanas. [ Oz du Soleil: ] Yeah. Alexandre. [ Portuguese 00:10:22 ]. Alexandre is a good guy.
[ Cristiano: ] Happy birthday, Bill. [ MrExcel: ] Thanks, Marcelo.
[ Cristiano: ] Bill, if only I wished you a birthday with an EVEN function. Easy.
[ MrExcel: ] Yeah, that's right. It is my birthday if you send my birthday into the EVEN function. We said we'd never use EVEN again, but here today.
[ Oz du Soleil: ] Oh yeah, and that was Win Hopkins's comment is said, "Never used it, never will again." [ Faraz: ] Right.
[ Oz du Soleil: ] Yeah. I think that's all of us, right?
[ Frederic: ] Yes, definitely. [ Oz du Soleil: ] Ligia.
[ Frederic: ] Yes, definitely because modular is much simpler, it's easier to use than EVEN or odd. So modular is the perfect function to use. [ Cristiano: ] Yeah, right.
[ Oz du Soleil: ] Right. And that's the challenge, and that's the exciting thing for me is looking for really the essence of what the function does. Because if I can think of three other things, then what is still different about this one different from those other three? That makes it really hard.
[ Frederic: ] Your idea to use a Lambda function was great because it's a new one and you can do a lot of stuff with it, but EVEN believe it or not, what a nightmare.
[ Oz du Soleil: ] And I think, Bill, I think came up with Lambda.
[ MrExcel: ] Yeah. Because it was new, right? [ Oz du Soleil: ] Yeah.
[ MrExcel: ] Had a good chance to try something out. Lambda and let.
[ Oz du Soleil: ] Yep. Lambda and let. [ MrExcel: ] I saw some great Lambdas. Someone returned a picture via Lambda. I was like, "Whoa, never thought about doing that." [ Oz du Soleil: ] Todd Singer. [ MrExcel: ] Todd Singer. How you doing, Todd?
[ Oz du Soleil: ] All right. [ Cristiano: ] From Indianapolis.
[ Oz du Soleil: ] Yeah. It was pretty neat to see how many people used Lambda to retrieve the image.
[ MrExcel: ] Yeah. I never realized that was a thing. And I was working on a new book and I threw that, that's like the last topic in the book, how to return an image via Lambda. So I stole that from Excel Hash. I should pay some royalty or something, right?
[ Oz du Soleil: ] Yeah. There was a lot to learn here, like John Michaloudis's slicers.
[ MrExcel: ] Oh yeah. [ Oz du Soleil: ] That was really cool.
[ MrExcel: ] Changing the slicers. That was cool. [ Oz du Soleil: ] Yeah.
[ MrExcel: ] Absolutely, right. Yeah. So Oz, what'd you get out of Excel Hash?
[ Oz du Soleil: ] Yep. And David Benay... What did I? Thinking about what things really do. Because as I said already about seeing a bunch of different ways to do the same thing, but then I've got to justify this one. I don't want to have somebody come back and say, "Oh, you could have done this so much simpler." So it's a real brainteaser to think about what does this thing actually do that's different from this thing that's like it? What's the difference between max and large? And then you throw ceiling in there. So things that do something similar, but they still have their own way that they're different.
[ MrExcel: ] Right, yeah. Large can get the second largest. Max always just gets the max.
[ Oz du Soleil: ] Right. [ MrExcel: ] Yeah, right. Yeah.
[ Oz du Soleil: ] Yeah. [ MrExcel: ] That's good. I know Oz, you've been a storyteller and improv and you've done all these theatrical kinds of things. So did that influence your idea for Excel Hash with the underworld and having to bribe people to get fresh water and all that? It was a very cinematic video, right? [ Oz du Soleil: ] Right, definitely.
Okay, so here's how I approached my video. The first year, we all did these long, detailed videos that seemed to **** all of us off. We all said, we're not doing that again. And it wasn't necessary because once somebody has explained the ingredients, it's no reason to listen to a bunch of other people explain them again. So my video wound up being about nine minutes longer than I expected, but it was more theatrical and I felt okay about that because I was not getting down into the weeds of the stuff. I figured folks watch enough videos, they'll get a sense of what is EVEN. And then I had the choice of the four, the Lambda, let, dynamic arrays and something else, and I used the let and dynamic arrays. So I just made a movie and didn't get into the how to. Yeah.
[ MrExcel: ] Yeah. [ Frederic: ] You're not the only one. Win Kent also did that. He just plays a scenario and how he makes a different video.
[ Oz du Soleil: ] Yeah, he just did the demo. Yeah. And I've watched The Book of Eli a few times and I liked that view of things and I wondered what other kind of jobs would be in that world. So I just developed this whole little movie and just did a demo.
[ Frederic: ] Yeah, it was great. [ Cristiano: ] I like the effects of that part of the eye. [ Oz du Soleil: ] Of the eye.
[ Cristiano: ] Like a horror movie, something like that.
[ Oz du Soleil: ] Yep, yep, yep. [ Faraz: ] The last part was quite scary. Just he comes and he just brings his sword in like this and swings the sword.
[ Cristiano: ] And he uses soundtracks and effects too. So it's not only about the video, but the sound part of the video. I like that.
[ Oz du Soleil: ] And a lot of it is too, thinking about watching a Key and Peele sketch, it builds to something. There's a punchline in the end, so I couldn't just demo it and say, "Okay, thanks a lot." And then be done. I wanted it to build to a boom. So that storytelling, that's sketch writing. Yeah. [ Frederic: ] Yeah.
[ Oz du Soleil: ] So all of that was in there and it was pretty neat to be able to focus on that once I got my solution built. And I'm taking a comedy writing class on Saturdays online, and that's helping me in addition to the shows I've been in for storytelling and whatnot.
[ MrExcel: ] Yeah, that's great. That's awesome. [ Oz du Soleil: ] Yeah, thanks.
[ MrExcel: ] Not just straight Excel, but something outside of Excel.
[ Oz du Soleil: ] Yeah. And I had my first paid video editing gig back in October.
[ MrExcel: ] Oh really? [ Oz du Soleil: ] Yeah, yeah.
[ Cristiano: ] That's good. [ MrExcel: ] That's cool. Wow.
[ Oz du Soleil: ] Yeah, it was. I enjoyed it.
[ MrExcel: ] You should be a Camtasia MVP or something, right?
[ Oz du Soleil: ] Yeah. I was surprised that they know me.
[ MrExcel: ] Oh, they know All of us. [ Frederic: ] He's a DJ now too.
[ Cristiano: ] Unrelated to Excel. Nothing with Excel.
[ Oz du Soleil: ] No. [ Frederic: ] You did an interview for TechSmith long time ago, no? [ Oz du Soleil: ] Me?
[ Faraz: ] And he was there.
[ Oz du Soleil: ] Yeah. I did a livestream conversation with somebody from TechSmith where we were discussing video length, how caught up should a person be about the length of their videos. Do you all think about that when you're making videos for YouTube?
[ Frederic: ] Yeah, but I remember you have shared a link long time ago, maybe one or two years ago. Yeah, I remember you've been... It's so to see you be- [ Faraz: ] I think you might be talking about Oz with this course maybe?
[ Oz du Soleil: ] No, no, no, no. I did a livestream discussion with somebody from TechSmith a few months ago, maybe back in the summer. [ MrExcel: ] So are we all Camtasia or is someone using something different other than Camtasia for your YouTube videos?
[ Faraz: ] Camtasia. [ MrExcel: ] Camtasia?
[ Faraz: ] Camtasia for Mac. [ MrExcel: ] Oh my God. You and the Mac.
[ Cristiano: ] Cristian is telling that he watches the movie after seeing your video. [ MrExcel: ] Amazing.
[ Oz du Soleil: ] Oh, cool. [ Cristiano: ] The Book of Eli.
[ Oz du Soleil: ] Oh, okay. Okay. All right, thanks Cristian. Yeah.
[ Cristiano: ] Yeah. [ Oz du Soleil: ] Wow.
[ Cristiano: ] We have some words from David Aubert. Hi.
[ Frederic: ] Hi, David. [ Oz du Soleil: ] Happy birthday for Bill Jelen.
[ MrExcel: ] Yeah, thanks. [ Frederic: ] I don't know how many people is watching, but maybe I have something to propose. Does they have an idea maybe to include next year in the Excel Hash? It could be fun that we ask the audience.
[ MrExcel: ] What crazy ingredients should we use next time?
[ Frederic: ] Yeah. I know there is a function. I have a question for all my friends. It's square pi. How do you use this function, square pi?
[ MrExcel: ] Oh my God, I have a story about that. [ Oz du Soleil: ] Okay, okay.
[ Frederic: ] I have tried to make a lot of research. Impossible find how to use it.
[ MrExcel: ] I used to talk in my live seminar about the functions that I couldn't find any use for. Fact double was one and that square root of pi, and I was in Springfield, Missouri, which doesn't mean anything to you, Fred. It's just in the middle of the country and a whole bunch of people from in town, like 200 people were there. It was a big, big seminar for me. And there's a company in Springfield, Missouri that makes underground tanks for oil or water or whatever. And a guy in the back row, he stood up, he says, "Oh no, we use that all the time." When you have a round tank and you need to fit as much liquid as a square tank, he had some formula that would convert a square tank to a round tank or a cylindrical tank using square root of pi. Now, how did that ever make it into Excel? How did that become a thing in Excel? But here was one guy, one guy in Springfield, Missouri who's like, "Oh yeah, I use that all the time." [ Frederic: ] Springfield, Missouri. Is it Homer Simpson?
[ MrExcel: ] Yeah, it was one of the Springfields. So we don't know which Springfield it is. [ Frederic: ] If I know Springfield, it's just because there is the Simpsons. That's all. [ MrExcel: ] Right.
[ Oz du Soleil: ] Right, yeah. But that's interesting, and that is one thing when I've gone through to look at the functions, I don't want to come up with something so weird to where now you got to go get an engineering degree or something in order to do anything with it like kurtosis. [ MrExcel: ] Yeah.
[ Oz du Soleil: ] The KURT function. [ MrExcel: ] The Bessel functions, equal Bessel I, Bessel J, what the heck? Right? [ Frederic: ] Right.
[ MrExcel: ] How would we ever do anything with that?
[ Oz du Soleil: ] Yeah, yeah. So Fred was suggesting about how to pick ingredients for next year.
[ Frederic: ] Yeah, but ask to the people, or maybe do a poll.
[ Faraz: ] You can get it in the chat, people can- [ Frederic: ] We have one year.
[ Oz du Soleil: ] Well, the challenge is, and that's what happened, we did that the first year and we had this whole long thing that then I would set up a randomizer for four, and every time I hit it, it came up with something that already goes together. So you got an if, a pivot table, conditioning formatting, and sum. Well, we could just go pull anything off our files and submit that. So then I had to think about it some more and then we wound up with frequency in there and the 3D model.
[ MrExcel: ] 3D model, I've never used a 3D model since Excel Hash. One of those things that you used it once and then it's like, "All right, I know it's there. I'm never going to use it again." [ Frederic: ] But honestly... Sorry, Oz But this year, the cutout person was a very good idea because honestly, I never use the cutout people, but it gave me a lot of new idea for my next presentation. So this year, honestly, cutout people was a great idea and I'm sure it's going to give a lot of value for other people. It was great.
[ MrExcel: ] Especially when they're holding the sign, right?
[ Frederic: ] Yeah. [ Oz du Soleil: ] Yeah.
[ MrExcel: ] Where you could put the words in that. [ Oz du Soleil: ] Yeah.
[ Faraz: ] That was a very interesting trend. [ Oz du Soleil: ] And Paula did a good job with that, with the dynamic text. Yeah. And that's something else that's come out of this is seeing how other people use Excel, seeing how other people think and then be, "Oh, okay, I can actually use that for something." [ Frederic: ] The solution, it was shown to you automatically or randomly it changes. The picture was great.
[ Faraz: ] Yes, right. [ Frederic: ] This one was great, I think.
[ Oz du Soleil: ] Yeah. That was the 3D model, I use those when I'm editing video, because I can go and get a bee and put it on a green slide in PowerPoint and move that bee around and then bring it over into Camtasia, get rid of the green and have a bee sitting right there.
[ MrExcel: ] Oh, and it flies around your Excel screen then?
[ Oz du Soleil: ] Yeah. [ MrExcel: ] Nice.
[ Oz du Soleil: ] I've used a beating heart, the skeleton, shark, all kinds of 3D models, but in Camtasia. [ MrExcel: ] Right, yeah.
[ Oz du Soleil: ] Yeah. [ MrExcel: ] That's a great idea.
[ Oz du Soleil: ] Yeah.
[ MrExcel: ] Is it a certain green? Does it have to be a certain green or any green?
[ Oz du Soleil: ] No, it has to be a color that there's nothing else that's the color of.
[ MrExcel: ] Okay. [ Oz du Soleil: ] So you could make it gold, but as long as you don't have something else on the screen that's gold, it's fine.
[ MrExcel: ] I never used that [ inaudible 00:25:24 ]- [ Faraz: ] You use that visual effect, right? When we add that with the visual effects, you record it and then you add the visual effects?
[ Oz du Soleil: ] I record it and then I take that clip and put it into Camtasia, yeah.
[ Faraz: ] Yes. And then you add it in. [ Oz du Soleil: ] And then remove color. It's that remove color feature. [ Faraz: ] Yes.
[ Oz du Soleil: ] Yeah. I use remove color a lot. [ Faraz: ] That's cool.
[ Oz du Soleil: ] Yeah. So I guess any closing thoughts about Excel Hash 2021 before we finally put it to rest and look toward '22? [ Faraz: ] So first of all, I would like to say thank you Oz and Bill, sir, both of you. Really appreciate your time. You have given [ inaudible 00:26:11 ] this video, everyone's video and have come up and it's great you have that and this is what I'd like to thank. And the last word, we will be seeing soon in the next challenge 2022. And that's all I have to say from my side.
[ Oz du Soleil: ] Thanks, thanks. Fred? [ Frederic: ] Yeah. What?
[ Oz du Soleil: ] Any closing thoughts about Excel Hash 2021? You said it all.
[ Frederic: ] But for me, it was a challenge too far. Like I said earlier, it was a challenge to find an idea to mix all this feature altogether because I want to find something useful and not just a factor to play with the different ingredients, but also really like what the others did because each one of us put something on the table and like you mentioned in your video, or Bill and you, it was great. We all had great idea to find the way to mix all this ingredient. So I really like all the solutions. It's difficult to find which one is the best because I really like the one of John Campura with the table. [ Oz du Soleil: ] Yes.
[ Frederic: ] This one was great. [ Oz du Soleil: ] Yeah, it is hard to find some winner. So Bill and I, in the background, we had just joked around with the idea of a best this, best that versus an overall best. [ Frederic: ] [ inaudible 00:27:40 ] not be the winner. [ Oz du Soleil: ] Hmm?
[ Frederic: ] Seriously, I was very glad to not be one of the winner because I don't know how I can use it in France. [ MrExcel: ] We would've changed the prize for you. You would've got a $100 worth of croissants or something.
[ Frederic: ] Another winner. [ Oz du Soleil: ] Yeah.
[ Cristiano: ] I lost the connection, but I could hear a little about somebody that made a solution that we like a lot. And I saw John MacDougall with that thing of automation and automated. Great, great. There's a guy here, David Aubert, telling that he would like to see Office Script in the next. Take a look on the 16th video, there's something.
[ Faraz: ] The next Excel Hash. [ Cristiano: ] Exactly. It's trying to complicate.
[ Oz du Soleil: ] Yeah, this is interesting. This is interesting, right?
[ MrExcel: ] It's interesting, yeah. [ Oz du Soleil: ] Because- [ Faraz: ] It's entirely on the web. [ Oz du Soleil: ] This is interesting because I don't want to get into coding, that's why we took VBA off the table. But the idea of Excel on the web, that's available to people to use, nobody used it though.
[ MrExcel: ] Well, no, no. John MacDougall did. He was all on- [ Oz du Soleil: ] John MacDougall. John MacDougall, okay. [ MrExcel: ] Yeah.
[ Oz du Soleil: ] Okay, right. Yes, yes. You commented on that. Yeah.
[ Cristiano: ] The last video of the playlist. The last one.
[ Oz du Soleil: ] Yeah. Yeah. [ Cristiano: ] Brilliant, brilliant.
[ Oz du Soleil: ] Yes, it was. It was. I agree. Brilliant.
[ MrExcel: ] I don't know. Before we do Excel Online, why don't we do Excel for the Commodore 64 or something? You only had 256 rows by 12 columns. See what you could do there. [ Oz du Soleil: ] Wow, wow.
[ MrExcel: ] Oh, Excel Online. That would be a real challenge. I would almost rather do Excel on the Mac. [ Oz du Soleil: ] Wow.
[ Frederic: ] There is one trick. It's how to insert a slicer on Excel Online. It's possible, but it's very not easy to find where it is. For those who are listening, you have to do a right click on the field and it's only there that you have add as a slicer, otherwise you cannot find the option.
[ MrExcel: ] That was David's comment, right? [ Frederic: ] Yeah.
[ MrExcel: ] David, I congratulate you for giving five people heartburn with doing Excel Online.
[ Oz du Soleil: ] It's not even noon here, and I already got some glyco... But I need to thank Bill for having wound up being like a co-producer of this thing. I didn't expect that, but I appreciated all the help in the background and thanks. Thanks for Cristiano for helping with this livestream and appreciate all the participants. Faraz, Fred, Paula, John Campura.
[ Frederic: ] Can I see all the comments? [ Oz du Soleil: ] We had several Johns. Huh?
[ MrExcel: ] Yeah. [ Cristiano: ] We have Wayne from California.
[ Oz du Soleil: ] Oh, Wayne. [ MrExcel: ] Hey, Wayne. This is awesome.
[ Oz du Soleil: ] Yeah, yeah. [ Cristiano: ] [ inaudible 00:30:53 ] NASA.
[ Oz du Soleil: ] Guys, I appreciate it. I appreciate it all.
[ MrExcel: ] We're ready to watch the Mars Landing next. That's our next schedule.
[ Frederic: ] That's a good comment. It's also live in France. We're following that each minute, so it should be landing in one hour and 15 minutes, something like that.
[ Oz du Soleil: ] Ah, okay. Mars, yeah. [ Frederic: ] I'm sure that Bill Jelen takes some inspiration from NASA to make some crazy solutions and complex stuff.
[ Oz du Soleil: ] Well, the first year was a real one. Was that Benin or?
[ MrExcel: ] Bennu. [ Oz du Soleil: ] Bennu.
[ MrExcel: ] Asteroid Bennu. Yeah, right. That was a NASA project. And since then, don't get me started. Since then, they've actually gone and they touched down on Bennu and they collected some rocks and they're sending them back. It'll take a couple of years to get back here, but that was an interesting landing, trying to land on something pretty small, but they did a great job. [ Oz du Soleil: ] Yeah. Wow.
[ MrExcel: ] Although- [ Oz du Soleil: ] Cristiano... Yeah, go ahead.
[ MrExcel: ] It was gripping. When they collected the stuff, it was supposed to close. The door was supposed to close, it didn't close. And so all this debris and dust from the asteroid is falling out, and so they had to change their plans and close it up real fast before it all leaked out into space. So we think it's a foregone conclusion they're going to land on Mars today. There's a lot of stuff that can go wrong and it's so far away. So it'll be interesting to see what happens today with that Mars landing. They make them look easy. [ Cristiano: ] Even the photography can go wrong on time. [ Oz du Soleil: ] A couple years to get back.
[ MrExcel: ] Yeah, right. Yeah. All kinds of things. All kinds of things.
[ Cristiano: ] Even the photography can go wrong. It's not easy.
[ MrExcel: ] A year ago, there was lander from Israel that was going to land on the moon and it got there, all these eight orbits around the earth and it got there and the computer rebooted on the way down. And during that reboot, crashed into the moon because it didn't turn on its thrusters. So I hope it wasn't Windows. I hope it wasn't a Windows computer that caused that.
[ Oz du Soleil: ] Right, right. [ MrExcel: ] Linux or something.
[ Oz du Soleil: ] Wow. [ MrExcel: ] Yeah.
[ Oz du Soleil: ] Yeah. [ Frederic: ] So I never told you this story- [ Oz du Soleil: ] Cristiano, any closing thoughts? And then we'll get to Bill and then we get out of here. All right. Cristiano?
[ Cristiano: ] I see people being encouraged by the challenge, trying to make at home, their own solutions. We have one guy here from a comment right there on the beginning. And this is awesome, the work that you guys, thanks to your initiative. This is inspiring people to try to push the boundaries to be better in Excel. And this is fantastic. I see that they are trying to invent something. I saw a guy publishing his own video, even not on the list of the competitor participant. [ MrExcel: ] Oh, that's cool.
[ Oz du Soleil: ] Yes. There was a guy, I shared it. [ Cristiano: ] Yeah, on LinkedIn.
[ MrExcel: ] He was on LinkedIn. [ Oz du Soleil: ] Yes. It was really good.
[ Cristiano: ] He just decided, okay, I'm making the challenge too. Here's my video. Excel Hash.
[ Oz du Soleil: ] Yep. [ MrExcel: ] Sweet. That's awesome.
[ Oz du Soleil: ] It was beautiful. [ MrExcel: ] That's awesome.
[ Oz du Soleil: ] It was beautiful. Yep. [ Cristiano: ] Thanks. This is really awesome. Not only because Excel, I can talk because of my case, I had to find information about another problem and this make us to think outside the box, so thank you very much. And it was fun.
[ Frederic: ] Even for us. [ Cristiano: ] Thanks.
[ Frederic: ] Even for us. [ Oz du Soleil: ] And I'll say part of it comes from when I was in art school and seeing the students use stuff the wrong way or doing weird stuff. And one thing, I took a class on making pottery. You get the clay and everything and then put stuff in the kiln. Well, I had a whole bunch of peanut shells that I packed my piece in and it looked like when it came out of the kiln, like it was centuries old. The instructor didn't know what we were going to get, but he was always up for experimentation and it was freaky the way that happened. Then there was this other thing that made me mad. There were these two filmmakers. They took some film and put it in a crab pot and threw it in the ocean and they left it for a few days, come back and they developed the film and played it for us. And it was a lot of interesting pops and squiggles and burned things and for five minutes it was okay. 15 minutes of that started to be too much. 45 minutes later when that **** ended, I was like, "Goddammit y'all, This is abusive, this is... No." And when they came up to talk about their film afterwards, I wanted to smack them. And ask, "Why did you..." Five minutes was great. It was fascinating.
[ MrExcel: ] There's a lesson there. Your entry should not be that long. Five minutes.
[ Oz du Soleil: ] All right. And Bill, closing comments?
[ MrExcel: ] Oh yeah, I always have fun with this. I learned so much just watching all the other videos and of course being a smart ***. That's just trying to figure out how good was their use of Even, right? [ Oz du Soleil: ] Mm-hmm.
[ MrExcel: ] Did they really have a legitimate use for Even?
[ Frederic: ] Use ISEVEN, not EVEN. ISEVEN. [ MrExcel: ] Yeah, I got it completely wrong. Fred, you said, "My video's done, but you can't watch it until you're done with yours." So I didn't watch anyone else until mine was done. And then I went and watched Win. And I'm like, "Why is he using EVEN? It was ISEVEN." And then I realized when my video was done, too late. That was it, the story. So I was pretty much disqualified, although Ran Between didn't care. I still had an equal one in 17, two in 17 shot, so what the heck? Yeah, no, it was fun. It was fun. [ Oz du Soleil: ] Yeah, yeah. Nice.
[ Faraz: ] I wrapped it even into an EVEN. [ MrExcel: ] Yeah.
[ Oz du Soleil: ] Yeah. [ MrExcel: ] For us, you have the most evens in your formula of anyone. [ Cristiano: ] And finally, I have an ISEVEN [ MrExcel: ] With an ISEVEN. I wrote that down. So gold star for the most use of EVEN.
[ Oz du Soleil: ] Yeah, yeah. All right. Cool. [ MrExcel: ] Okay, that's good. Thank you. Thank you all. Thanks for being here. [ Faraz: ] Thank you.
[ Oz du Soleil: ] Thanks for the discussion and the participation, and embracing this thing that I was not sure anybody would embrace, but we got a lot out of it. And the audience as well. And thank you to the audience too. Really, really appreciate you all.
[ MrExcel: ] And hey everyone watching, double O. Like, subscribe, and ring that bell for all five of us. All five of us. Go sub to all five of us.
[ Oz du Soleil: ] All five. [ MrExcel: ] Yeah, right. All right.
[ Oz du Soleil: ] All right. [ MrExcel: ] Awesome. Thanks.
[ Oz du Soleil: ] All right. [ Frederic: ] Bye.
[ MrExcel: ] Thanks. [ Faraz: ] Cool.
[ Cristiano: ] Bye-bye, guys. [ Oz du Soleil: ] All right, thanks a lot.
[ Faraz: ] Bye. Thank you. [ Cristiano: ] Thanks for watching.
[ MrExcel: ] Bye. [ Cristiano: ] Bye.
[ Frederic: ] Thanks for watching. Bye.
