Convert Text to Numbers in Excel

It’s common to find numbers stored as text in Excel. This leads to incorrect calculations when you use these cells in Excel functions such as SUM and AVERAGE (as these functions ignore cells that have text values in it). In such cases, you need to convert cells that contain numbers as text back to numbers. Now …

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Using Slicers in Excel Pivot Table – A Beginner’s Guide

Excel 2010 version of the Pivot Table was jazzed up by the entry of a new super cool feature – Slicers. A Pivot Table Slicer enables you to filter the data when you select one or more than one options in the Slicer box (as shown below). In the example above, Slicer is the orange box on …

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How to Refresh Pivot Table in Excel (Manually + Auto-Refresh with VBA)

Once you have created a Pivot Table, it doesn’t automatically refresh when you add new data or change the existing data. Since your Pivot Table is created using the Pivot Cache, when the existing data changes or when you add new rows/columns to the data, the Pivot Cache does not update itself automatically, and hence, …

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How to Make a Pivot Table in Excel (Easy Step-by-Step)

If you want to summarize a big dataset in Excel, like getting total sales by region or finding your top customers, a Pivot Table can do it in a few clicks, and you don’t need a single formula. It’s one of the most powerful features in Excel (no kidding). And the best part is that …

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How to Calculate and Format Percentages in Excel

Often, there are two types of percentages that one needs to calculate in Excel. In this tutorial, I will show you the formula to calculate percentages in Excel as well as to format the cell so that the numbers show up as percentages (and not decimals). So let’s get started! Calculating Percentage as a Proportion …

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How to make VLOOKUP Case Sensitive

By default, the lookup value in the VLOOKUP function is not case sensitive. For example, if your lookup value is MATT, matt, or Matt, it’s all the same for the VLOOKUP function. It’ll return the first matching value irrespective of the case. Making VLOOKUP Case Sensitive Suppose you have the data as shown below: As you …

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How to Quickly Create a Waffle Chart in Excel

Have you heard of the Waffle Chart (also called the square pie chart)? I have seen these in a lot of dashboards and news article graphics, and I find these really cool. A lot of times, these are used as an alternative to the pie charts. Here is an example of a waffle chart (shown below): …

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How to Use VLOOKUP with Multiple Criteria

Excel VLOOKUP function, in its basic form, can look for one lookup value and return the corresponding value from the specified row. But often there is a need to use the Excel VLOOKUP with multiple criteria. How to Use VLOOKUP with Multiple Criteria Suppose you have a data with students name, exam type, and the Math …

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3 Easy Ways to Insert Cent Symbol in Excel

If you work with currency/sales data, it comes in handy to know how to insert dollar and cent symbols with the numerical/sales values in Excel. While the dollar sign is right there on the keyboard, cent symbol is a little more difficult to find and insert. How to Insert a Cent Symbol in Excel In this …

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