If you have an error, try #IFERROR
It is not uncommon to complete a spreadsheet model for expected values only to find that some user inputs are not what you expected result in errors. Depending upon the details, you simply what to stop that error behaviour cropping up in your reporting -...
Fathoming formula
Put yourself in the position of a learner ... You are following a workbook exercise using Excel. You've put the formula in, and entered the data. But something is wrong the number you've got is different to the workbook. Option 1: You put your hand up. The class is...
Spreadsheets through time …
@TimHarford's article in the @FT shows how spreadsheets are in fact a projection of good practice from when "computers" were just people. The modern risks and issues that have been attributed to "spreadsheet error" fascinating. However they show what is digital...
Understanding JOINTEXT
Normally we use EQUS to demonstrate numeric computations but here is a nice example with textual data. Inspired by some a tweet from @ddalgleish here is a short video showing JOINTEXT visualised using the EQUS add-in https://youtu.be/g7vaSAlwLkI
Misunderstanding Percentages … 4*5%
Numerical reasoning is often a challenge, especially when percentages are involved. To start with "%" is very simple, but of course its use in context often makes things harder. Here we show how putting percentage expressions in Excel and seeing them visualised in...
Free EQUS download for a limited period
For a short period we are enabling free access to EQUS Expert. This is so you can experience the full functionality of EQUS and put it through its paces. We welcome your feedback on it. EQUS provides an easy to use means of showing how Excel computations are...
LEFT, RIGHT and FIND
Strings and things Think spreadsheets and you normally think numbers. However they are good at many processing tasks including text processing. Here we use a simple example from by Sumit Bansal in trumpexcel.com, extracting the first word from a cell. The article...
Looking up …
Looking up and extracting data from tables of numbers and strings is one of those things that most serious data analysts need to do on a regular basis. If you're familiar with Excel, you may have come across VLOOKUP and HLOOKUP and more recently XLOOKUP. Each of these...
EQUS in action … XOR and IFERROR
@msexcel regularly remind the Excel community of some of the useful functions and formula that help with finance, business analysis, data analysis and all the other jobs that Excel gets used for. Here we've a few illustrations inspired by @msexcel. One or the other...
Fixing a spreadsheet formula
We have done a little theorising on complexity of working with a simple functional language. Although not necessarily famed for being a functional language, we are looking at spreadsheets and applying a classical model of human performance known as the Keystroke Level...