Formatting Data Your Way

This is one of my Favorite Excel Tricks, and it should be in your arsenal of weapons against Poorly Formatted Data.

As an advanced user, you undoubtedly have many times been presented with data that is Not in an ideal format. One common case is when you are presented with list of employee names showing the Entire first and last name in each cell in a column.

As you are aware, Database Best Practices dictate that it is best to Break Down or Parse Your Information into the smallest discreet portions reasonable. Therefore, you would naturally prefer to have the first names in one column and the last names in another column. Of course if you have hundreds of employees in your company, this would be Pure Drudgery (who needs that?...) to convert manually.

Extracting the first names and last names into their own separate fields (columns) with Convenient Excel Formulas is a Breeze (can you feel it whistling through your hair?).

The Excel Functions that we will be Using in the Formulas are:

A) LEN - Returns the number of characters in a text string

B) FIND – Returns the starting position of one text string within another text string

C) LEFT – Returns the specified number of characters from the start of a text string

D) RIGHT - Returns the specified number of characters from the end of a text string

To extract just the First Name, use the following:

=LEFT(A1, FIND(" ", A1, 1)-1)

To extract just the Last Name:

=RIGHT(A1, LEN(A1)-FIND(" ", A1))

These simple formulas can save you tons of work. Now it’s your turn, give them a try!

Just for Fun…

Once in a while, even an Advanced Excel User should have a bit of Geeky Fun. Although of no real Practical use, it can be interesting, (once again, in a geeky sort of way), to play around with Roman Numerals. Even for an Excel guru, it may be surprising to find that the application has a built-in Roman numeral function.

Practicality, of course, can occasionally be overrated, and it is readily apparent that Hollywood, Football, and the Olympics have all used Roman numerals on a regular basis. If you also wish to do this sometime in Excel, (I probably wouldn’t recommend it for your next quarterly report to your boss, unless the individual has a really good sense of humor), you can use the Roman function.

For a Classic Numeral, (other formats are available, but who needs them…), simply enter a value in cell A1 and type, “=Roman(A1)” in cell B1. Hit Enter and Presto, a Roman numeral of the A1 number!

Now you will be all set if the NFL or Olumpics needs someone to come up with the name for the next Major Event!

Micro-Graphs for All!

As most Excel Gurus know, there is a new Micro-Graph functionality in Excel 2010. Cool stuff, but if you don’t have that permutation of Excel, here is a way to make a simple Micro-Graph that resides in your table and Works in Any Version of Excel!

This is actually very easy. Let’s say you have your Products (or sales reps) in Column A as illustrated above, and in Column B you have the Units Sold. Here is the formula you should put in Cell C2:

= REPT( “l” , B2/10) and then copy it to C7

For Each Approximate Count of Ten, the formula puts a Hash Mark, (using an Arial font works well), in Column C. The result is a simple, easily read, Micro-Chart!

Try it out in the office, and show them once again why you are the Excel Guru of the Known Universe!

Concatenation for the Advanced User

This is one of my favorite time savers. I teach Excel, and I have had classes as large as 200 students. Since I believe strongly in frequent communication, I keep in touch with individual students and the group as a whole. Having a spreadsheet of student names (or company employees perhaps) is great to stay organized, but what if you want to use your data for sending emails? This is where Concatenation Shines!

Consider that you have a list of students with the First Names in Column A and Last Names in Column B. The good news is that you can easily combine them into an Email-Friendly column of names in a “Last Name, First Name” format is easy. The secret to Concatenation is using Ampersands and cell references combined with quoted text or punctuation. Here’s how to do it:

Assuming your table starts in cell A1, put the following formula in C1 (be sure to note that there is a space after the comma in quotation marks):

=B1&", "&A1

This simple formula combines the contents of B1 (last name)with a comma, space, and contents of A1 (first name). Select C1, place your cursor over the “handle” in the lower-right corner of the cell, and give a quick double-click. This will populate your Column C Email List down as far as you have data in Columns A and B.

Then it is a simple matter of copying the contents of Column C, and pasting into Outlook. Bamm! You have just saved a Ton of Time!