Excel used to be the poor schmuck’s database, with spreadsheets that just sort of sat there. You could create something more sophisticated with LOOKUP functions, but they were a huge hassle to set up.

Quit the data-search struggle by organizing your raw data into a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet. Rather than manually scrolling through a list of disorganized records, use Excel's built-in tools to find ...

Simplify your data transformation by skipping complex parsing expressions and instead using Flash Fill and Power Query in Microsoft Excel. Image: IB Photography/Adobe Stock If you work with imported ...

One of Excel’s greatest tricks is the dimensional or 3D reference. This feature, which allows you to create formulas that refer to the same cell or range on multiple worksheets, simplifies the ...

Update: There’s a more recent version of this article published here – Visualising geographic data in Excel 2016. If a picture says a 1,000 words, then a beautiful interactive map overlaid with ...

If you record daily sales data in Excel, it may be impossible to explain variances from day to day. Instead, it may make more sense to summarize the data by week to spot trends and explain variations.