Congratulations to Alex Kerin, whose name I selected in the random draw for the Excelerator Quiz giveaway. Here’s his name at the top of the list, after I used the RAND function, and sorted the Rand column in ascending order.

Alex’s prize is a 23” monitor, plus a keyboard and mouse, courtesy of the PowerPivot team. [...]

It’s Price Book publishing week for one of my clients, and we’ve been making lists, and checking them twice. Or 3 or 4 times, or more!
When comparing the new prices to the previous prices, an Excel AutoFilter comes in handy. You can select the same product or model in each workbook, and easily compare item [...]

Let’s call this installment, “The Mysterious Case of the Vanishing Parts.” (Read carefully -- that’s paRts, not paNts.)
And before I begin this sad story, remember to add your Excel question in the comments for Friday’s Excelerators Quiz post, so you have the chance to win a shiny new monitor.
Strange Formatting
Last Friday, I was working on [...]

Are you an Excel power user? Answer a few quick questions at the Excelerators Quiz site, and find out how you rate. You could even win a nice prize here at the Contextures blog!
The team at PowerPivot for Microsoft Excel 2010 created the Excelerators Quiz, and to make the challenge more exciting, they’re sponsoring a [...]

That’s my dad in the picture, proudly holding the catch of the day. He tried to teach me how to fish, but without much success.  (Worms…ewwww.)
This week someone asked me to explain the Excel OFFSET function, saying “Please teach me to fish.” That’s when it struck me that using OFFSET is similar to fishing.

When [...]

Occasionally, a football game appears on the television at my house. I’m talking about real football, with burly men in tight pants, not that other kind of football, with wiry men in shorts.
This weekend, one of the games was between teams from Arizona and New Orleans. While admiring the strategies of the two teams, [...]

After a long day of dealing with Excel formulas, pivot tables, and hidden Ribbon commands, you might be ready for an evening cocktail. Or six!
I found a link to this Canadian drinking study in the Toronto paper today, and it looks like we’re a nation of teetotalers. Is your country the same?
Apparently most Canadians don’t [...]

Rumours say that the late night TV schedule on NBC will change. Jay Leno will leave his 10 PM spot, and return to 11:35 PM. How long will the revised Leno show be, and what effect will it have on the rest of the schedule?
I’ll bet the NBC programming executives have set up an Excel [...]

Last Friday, January 8th, would have been Elvis Presley’s 75th birthday. Sadly, he died in 1977, so he never had a chance to work with Microsoft Excel. A Twitter challenge on the weekend was to rename some of Elvis’ hit songs, using Excel references. Who says Twitter is just a waste of time?
One of my [...]

Good work! You’ve stopped eating cookies, and you’re recording your daily food intake in the Excel Calorie Counter. The pounds are magically melting away, and you’re keeping track of your weight loss.
Here’s one more tool to help you with your healthy living plans – the Excel Calorie Burning Calculator. There’s a download link at the [...]