Excel Tips


Excel 2024: Make Pivot Tables Expandable Using Ctrl+T »

May 15, 2024

If you choose all of columns A:J and you later want to add more records below the data, it takes only a simple Refresh to add the new data instead of having to find the Change Data Source icon. In the past, this made sense. But today, Change Data Source is right next to the Refresh button and not hard to find.


Excel 2024: Specify Defaults for All Future Pivot Tables »

May 13, 2024

It took me six years, but I finally convinced the Excel team that a lot of people prefer Tabular layout for pivot tables to the Compact layout that became the default layout in Excel 2007. If you have Office 365, you now have the ability to specify pivot table defaults.


Excel 2024: Find the True Top Five in a Pivot Table »

May 10, 2024

Pivot tables offer a Top 10 filter. It is cool. It is flexible. But I hate it, and I will tell you why.


Excel 2024: Change the Calculation in a Pivot Table »

May 8, 2024

Pivot tables offer a myriad of calculations in the Field Settings dialog box. Here is a faster way to change a calculation.


Excel 2024: Create a Year-over-Year Report in a Pivot Table »

May 6, 2024

Let's say you have two years worth of detail records. Each record has a daily date. When you build a pivot table from this report, you will have hundreds of rows of daily dates in the pivot table.


Excel 2024: Create Your First Pivot Table »

May 2, 2024

Pivot tables let you summarize tabular data to a one-page summary in a few clicks. Start with a data set that has headings in row 1. It should have no blank rows, blank columns, blank headings or merged cells.


Excel 2024: Consolidate Quarterly Worksheets »

April 30, 2024

There are two ancient consolidation tools in Excel. To understand them, say that you have three data sets. Each has names down the left side and months across the top. Notice that the names are different, and each data set has a different number of months.


Excel 2024: Sort and Filter by Color or Icon »

April 29, 2024

Conditional formatting got a lot of new features, including icon sets and more than three levels of rules. This allows for some pretty interesting formatting over a large range. But once you format the cells, you might want to quickly see all the ones that are formatted a particular way.


Excel 2024: Sort Subtotals »

April 24, 2024

For those of you who have never used subtotals, here is how to set them up.