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Temporary Watermark in Excel

What are Pivot Tables?

Scaffolding in Excel

I Don't Know It All

Kimberlee Martin

Aug 3, 2020
3 min

I Don't Know It All

I am the first to admit that when it comes to Excel, I don’t know it all. Hard to believe, I know (LOL!!) I’ve had students who don’t seem to believe that. Like any good instructor, I can appear to walk on water from time to time. It’s all illusion, though, trust me. There’s a quote I’ve always liked: Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. - Sir Arthur C. Clarke That’s why I sometimes seem magical to my students. I’m using the sufficiently advan

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The Arguments of VLOOKUP

Kimberlee Martin

Jul 27, 2020
4 min

The Arguments of VLOOKUP

In previous blogs, I’ve talked about Excel’s VLOOKUP function. In one, I covered the purpose of VLOOKUP, and in the other, I explained the difference between VLOOKUP and HLOOKUP. Today, let’s take a look at the arguments of the VLOOKUP function. I’ve never been happy with the way Microsoft explains them in the Insert Function dialog box – I find their terminology confusing. In this blog, I’m going to try to clarify these arguments for you. Let me start by showing you what the

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Three Excel Functions You Should Be Using

Kimberlee Martin

Jul 17, 2020
3 min

Three Excel Functions You Should Be Using

Excel is a great tool for data analysis, with a powerful suite of built-in functions to help. You’re probably already familiar with some of the most common features, like SUM, AVERAGE and VLOOKUP. Here are three that you may not have heard of, but that are likely to help with your Excel projects. 1. DAYS The first function is DAYS. This function calculates the number of days between two dates. Here’s an example of when this might come in handy: In this example, I am calculati

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VLOOKUP vs. HLOOKUP

Kimberlee Martin

Jul 9, 2020
2 min

VLOOKUP vs. HLOOKUP

In my last post, I talked about why you might use the VLOOKUP feature. If you missed it, you can find it here. Today, I’m going to discuss the difference between VLOOKUP and HLOOKUP. The two features are nearly identical. The difference between the two is in the orientation of your lookup data. Let me explain. VLOOKUP stands for Vertical look-up. It works great when your look-up data is oriented vertically. Take a look at this example: Notice that the names go down column A,

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What is VLOOKUP, and Why Do I Need It?

Kimberlee Martin

Apr 30, 2020
2 min

What is VLOOKUP, and Why Do I Need It?

VLOOKUP is one of the coolest features of Microsoft Excel, and also one of the least understood. Lots of people are interested in it and have great cases for using it. But I get many people who tell me that they don't use it because they don't really understand how it works. Is it magic? YES! Well, sort of. OK, no. But still, it's one of the coolest features of Excel, and well worth understanding. In a nutshell, VLOOKUP is a database feature. Now, mind you, I don't recommend

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Data Accessibility

Kimberlee Martin

Aug 28, 2017
3 min

Data Accessibility

Just about all companies rely on electronic data these days, but not all companies can quickly and easily access their data. Here are a few of the common mistakes that I see frequently. Some companies keep their data in text documents, overwriting the existing data each time something changes. This is fast and convenient, but doesn’t allow you to view historical information. What if the customer says that you previously offered them a lower price – can you prove that, or do y

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Option Explicit

Kimberlee Martin

Apr 18, 2017
3 min

Option Explicit

If you’ve ever written VBA code in Excel, Access, or any of the other products in the Microsoft Office suite, you may already be familiar with Option Explicit. If you’re not, it'll be worth a few minutes of your time to learn about it. It’s a useful tool that will save you a lot of headaches. In order to understand the Option Explicit statement, you need to start by understanding that Visual Basic allows implicit variable declaration by default. This means that you are not re

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VBA Line Numbers

Tips for Structuring your Excel Data

Kimberlee Martin

Feb 27, 2017
4 min

Tips for Structuring your Excel Data

Excel has some amazing report tools including charts and pivot tables. These tools are quick and easy to use, and produce some spectacular reports. However, if your data is not structured cleanly, these tools will stumble. When clients ask us to create reports on their Excel data, the first (and often, longest) task is to clean up the data so that it’s in a consistent state for reporting. Since Excel is not a database tool, it allows you to enter your data in a way that may b

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Creating a Timer in Excel

Kimberlee Martin

Feb 16, 2017
6 min

Creating a Timer in Excel

The other day I had a client ask me to create a reminder in an Excel document that would pop up several times a day. It had to run at specific times, and the interval wasn’t always the same. For example, it might need to be displayed at 8:00 am, 9:00 am, 10:30 am, and 2:45 pm. The times were listed on a worksheet and were subject to change. They only needed to be displayed when one particular document was opened. At first I told the client that this would be an easy job, but

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Working ON our businesses, not just IN them

Kimberlee Martin

Feb 1, 2017
1 min

Working ON our businesses, not just IN them

I recently read a great post from Made to Thrive Consulting about working on our businesses, not just in them. Check it out here: http://www.madetothrivellc.com/single-post/2017/01/27/Are-we-working-ON-our-business-not-just-IN-them This reminded me that being a business owner is more than just having a job. In addition to our day-to-day functions, we always need to keep an eye on the future too. Just getting through today is not enough! That's one of the most important and re

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Protecting Data on an Access Form

Kimberlee Martin

Jan 20, 2017
4 min

Protecting Data on an Access Form

Microsoft Access allows you to quickly create forms for viewing and editing your data. One issue you may have run into with forms is that it’s easy to accidentally edit the data on a form with a slip of the fingers. Here’s the scenario: You open an Access form and are looking at the data. Someone comes into your office and distracts you, and you accidentally lean on your keyboard without noticing. Leaning on the keyboard causes data to be changed - the keys you accidentally p

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Recording Flexible Macros

Kimberlee Martin

Jan 3, 2017
5 min

Recording Flexible Macros

Recording macros in Excel is an easy way to automate repetitive tasks. Maybe you receive a new file every month with your sales figures in it, for example. You may need to sort the data, move it from one worksheet to another, or format it. If you repeat the same steps on the file month after month, this is a scenario where a macro will save you time and effort. The problem comes when the file that you receive isn’t quite the same each month. It’s typical in this scenario for

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Access or Excel?

Kimberlee Martin

Nov 30, 2016
4 min

Access or Excel?

Excel or Access? Microsoft has lots of great tools, and in most cases, it’s pretty clear which you need to use. If you need to write a letter, Word is your tool. If you need to create a slideshow, that’s PowerPoint. But often there’s confusion about Excel and Access. Since both can be used as database tools, which is best? The answer is: it depends. If you’re asking the question, you are probably already familiar with Excel, and you’ve probably already come across some of the

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What is Excel VBA?

Kimberlee Martin

Oct 31, 2016
4 min

What is Excel VBA?

If you've ever thought about creating macros in Excel, you've probably heard the term "VBA". In this post, I'm going to give you a little background on VBA so that you can decide if it's something you want to tackle. Excel is a great tool for analyzing and presenting your data. But if you're like most people, you spend more time than you'd like performing repetitive tasks. Maybe you need to import data from your database once a month, sort it, and format it, for example. Macr

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Welcome to my Blog!

Kimberlee Martin

Oct 30, 2016
2 min

Welcome to my Blog!

As a developer, I find that a lot of people seem to think that what I do is magic. When I take a complex process that someone has been struggling with and write a bit of code, I'm saving them both time and frustration. I understand that it can seem a little mysterious when I take something that's been costing them hours and reduce it to seconds. But I can assure you, I don't have a magic wand. Gandalf hasn't yet offered me a grand adventure with a mythical ring, and I'm still

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