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NKW6 Pt 3 INDEX and MATCH

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 Part 3 INDEX and MATCH The last in a set of three looking this time at INDEX and MATCH as a way to search a table and return the contents of a cell.  This combination is a more versatile and perhaps more robust method of looking up data in a table than VLOOKUP. When I look at these two functions I almost always use them together.   It looks somewhat complex but thinking through and breaking it down it becomes clear and there are significant advantages.   First of all indexing is a method of pointing to something so if you imagine a table and you tell the programme which row to go to and which column to align to, you end up and an intersection and the contents of the cell are returned.   This may have it’s uses but it is rather inflexible on its own. By introducing MATCH to replace a specified row or column number you are now making the function so much more flexible and powerful.  The MATCH function looks at a range (either a column or row) and then sees whether the specified value
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NKW6 Pt 2 VLOOKUP

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Part 2 VLOOKUP In this section I examine the fundamentals of VLOOKUP.  So what is VLOOKUP?  Well it is a way of searching a table for information based on a reference value and then returning the content from a specified column.  We can use this to search a reference table for example a list of clients in a database or we can use it to auto populate a form based on a reference.  The key aspect here is that there needs to be a unique reference identifier and the column containing the identifier needs to be the first column.   Let’s see what this looks like when written out: ·          =VLOOKUP ( P1 , A1:N5000 , 5 , 0 ) ·          The =VLOOKUP tells the programme what function you are using ·          All functions are enclosed in brackets () ·          P1 is the lookup value (this is what the programme will seek out from the table.   In this case it is a cell reference but could easily be some text or a figure ·          The A1:N5000 i s the table array or range where t
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NKW6 PT1 - IF

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Introduction I recently pulled together an Excel session to go through the fundamentals of the IF, VLOOKUP, INDEX and MATCH functions.  To do this I started out by putting together a bit of an explanation and then recording, with sample data, how these functions can be used and common pitfalls.  This is the first session. Part 1 IF The IF function can allow you to interrogate the information in a cell or cells and then instruct the programme to return a response, which can be text a number, a cell reference, another function or a calculation.  It sounds rather complex, another way to think about it might be to set yourself a problem for example If the total cost of a project exceeds £3m then I should abandon it otherwise I will go ahead.  How does this look when written out?   ·          =IF ( A1 > 3000000 , ”Abandon” , ”Proceed”) ·          The =IF tells the programme what function you are using ·          All functions are enclosed in brackets () ·          A1 is whe
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Power Query: Merge and Append

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  Power Query: Merge and Append Discover the efficiencies and benefits of connecting and combining your data sources to drive your governance and performance measurement! Don`t be put off by the terminology, Power Query is simply sorting and organising data that you wish to import into your Excel spreadsheet and in doing so you can save a lot of time and reduce the scope for errors. ; The merge and append bit is talking about taking different data sources and adding them together to form a single source from which you can then do all sorts of interesting things! First of all we need to define what we mean by  merge  and  append . ; To  merge  a data set in this case means to add one data set to another by adding additional fields. For example: If we have a table of data that contains details of employee departments we might want to add it to another data table that contains details of their salaries. ; In effect we will create a single table with more data fields in the form of additio
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Data Import to Excel Workbooks

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  Data Import to Excel Workbooks Data, millions of bits of data, in one huge amorphous mass or fragmented across multiple systems.  How to grab this and make sense of it? How many hours have been spent copying and pasting information from one spreadsheet to another?   How many times have data dumps been taken from systems in the form of CSV files, proving unmanageable and containing excessive amounts of irrelevant data, duplication or error?  There are many specialist applications out there that will take your data sources and swiftly churn out ever impressive trends, graphics and insights.  They are, however, expensive and not often  available to all employees.  A small business might not have the resources to commit to specialist packages. It's okay you can do so much in Excel with the right knowledge, training and awareness of capabilities. For example did you know? You can set up a connection between your database and an Excel workbook, no need for separate and obsolete data du
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Conditional Formatting

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  What is conditional formatting?    In literal terms it is getting the format of a cell to change depending upon the content of the cell linked to a rule of some sort. In layman’s terms or to the person on the street it is a helpful way to point out a specific thing in your table of information.    Examples might include entries on an arrivals board at an airport that are late in arriving, examination results of the class that are above and below average and the lists of competitors in triathlon by country or team. Wouldn’t it be really handy when scanning those departure boards at the airport if the flights to Newcastle had a black background and white lettering?    You would be able to pick out the flights pretty quickly if that was the case.    Usually red lettering, numbers or background are the only indications we are given about flight status. So why use conditional formatting? Well, speaking from my own experiences, I use conditional formatting as a method of highlighting error
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