Excel stuff to try
Lookup, VLookup, Hlookup
Think of the lookup function like a phonebook. If you don't know what a phonebook is, it's just like a lookup table in Excel, except made out of paper and not recognized by spellcheck.
Pivot Tables
Reaching for the mouse is a physically inefficient move as an Excel habit -- with one exception -- the Pivot Table. Drag, drop, organize and analyze.
FunctionS
There are many, but if there's something you want to do, there's probably a function a for it. FiX yOuR tExT, count the number of Smiths in your database -- it's here.
Shortcuts
Simple and simultaneous like CTRL+C, or nested and sequential, shortcuts are the single best way to spend less time in the weeds.
Formatting
I claim no expertise in creating aesthetic workbooks for art's sake -- form over function over here. Whether your goal is conditional formatting to ease and expedite analysis, or you just want to go full Mondrian, let us.
Charts
From F11 to LAST: (Legend, Axis, Scale, Title), let's turn your data into a thousand words. I even have a few tricks to fool Excel into doing things it didn't think it could.
DO YOU USE YOUR QUICK ACCESS TOOL bAR?
Not only does QAT play in Scrabble, it plays in Excel. The Quick Access Toolbar is essential for any user, especially those who have trouble finding that one function they always have trouble finding.
DEMONSTRATIONS
Sometimes I make quick little tools to accomplish tasks. Excel is a problem solving tool, so solve some problems. Sure, a dashboard would look pretty -- but this is how the sausage is made, and that is what I want to share with you.
Alchemy in Skyrim. In the Bethesda game Skyrim, mastering Alchemy means using a limited set of materials. There are multiple ways to combine these ingredients, so it is valuable to know when to use rare ingredients and when to use common ingredients. Glad I didn't waste that Nordic Barnacle on a Damage Magicka potion.
Creating assessments in SAKAI. SAKAI is a piece of Learning Management Software that integrates with web browsers to provide students and instructors to communicate with each other. It offers a tool for instructors to create assessments for their students by either entering each question individually or typing/pasting text in a specific format. I created this workbook to convert pre-existing Word documents into text files which I could paste easily into SAKAI. It sure beats manually transposing them one by one.
95% Confidence Intervals. I use this document to create visualizations for 95% Confidence Intervals for both proportions and means by modifying a graph designed to display stock prices. Yes, the color palette is ugly (unless you're a Pittsburgh sports fan), and yes, it's on purpose. Easily switch to existing templates, or do custom you.
Custom rubric feedback. The time challenge of providing students feedback on writing assignments is simplified by incorporating a standard rubric. Combined with any specific comments and an e-mail merge, instructors can deliver timely, detailed, and insightful feedback to their students.
SPSS recoding. I do analyses in SPSS. Here's a couple ways I expedite the recoding of variables. Quick solution that saves a ton of time, that's all.