If you've been reading along, over the last several posts you've learned the two major skills that any self-respecting Excel jockey counts as their go-tos: the ability to lookup (remember, I'm partial to index-match, but if you learned VH lookup, ride that until you crash your system) and the ability to pivot.
Now here's something really interesting: until we pierce
During the last discussion, you've (hopefully) learned how to generate a pivot table, and learned about the four "buckets" that can house your columns:
I'm also going to make the wild assumption that you've played around with your newly birthed pivot table, taking your column headings from your "raw" data (in the lingua franca of the
As previously discussed, the entry level data professional (coming from a background other than statistics, math, or computer science) consists of two keywords: The ability to lookup and the ability to pivot.
Dear reader, this is not an oversimplification or hyperbole, the hard truth is that if someone has a reasonable familiarity with a lookup function (remember, cool kids use
In my last entry, we discussed how to write a formula, and you've been armed with what each piece of the formula represents (the command, the variables, and the definition of an array). With this knowledge, you've actually been armed with the keys to the kingdom, and you're finally going to learn how to do something fancy.
There comes a
You may have picked up in my last post that some fellow wizards (of which I now consider you if you've mastered Index-Match, and you've activated developer mode) who may have started learning Excel prior to 2007 may drop the phrase "lookup;" generally in the context of "V-Lookup" (or perhaps "H-Lookup" if they're working with data that was formatted by
In my last entry, I took you on a journey to unlock the secrets of Excel; essentially making you a spreadsheet wizard. However, one important thing to remember at work is that a company can't function if it's comprised of only wizards (tell me to my face that Hogwarts was a functioning school!)
That begs the question, if I'm not
Alright, so unlike the other two guys, I work in corporate, which means I work with people who only use their computers to send emails, schedule meetings they'll cancel, and occasionally write a memo plus, because they're terrified of anyone associated with IT, they'll never ask for help. As such, I'm forced to do a similar job as my comrades