Excel

How to Write a Nested IF Statement in Excel

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Writing a Nested IF Statement is widely considered a rite of passage for beginning Excel users who are looking to become more advanced.  The first time I used this technique was during my new employee training, right before I became a business analyst in management consulting.  The overall concept of writing a Nested IF is ... Continue Reading >>

Excel Template: Tax Liability Estimator

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As we get close to the end of the year, one of the things I always make sure to check before January is my overall tax liability.  From a financial perspective, my preference is to owe the government a little bit of money.  If at the end of the year, the government owes me a ... Continue Reading >>

How to Use the MATCH Formula in Excel: Three Practical Examples

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Excel's MATCH formula is an extremely useful yet underutilized function within Excel's toolkit of formulas.  The reason people underestimate its value is because the MATCH formula's primary objective is fuzzy and ambiguous.  Without the proper context, its usefulness and potential applications are not obvious. The MATCH Continue Reading >>

How to Use IF ISNA to Hide VLOOKUP Errors

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When writing a series of VLOOKUP formulas, one of the annoying things is having to see the "#N/A" error after Excel has determined a lookup value is not available.  While we don't want to show any values when they are truly unavailable, from a visual design perspective, it's sometimes better just to show a blank space ... Continue Reading >>

How to Use the Excel MATCH Formula to Assign Histogram Bins

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One of the most annoying things to have to do in Excel is writing a Nested IF statement.  For those of you that haven't done this before, a Nested IF is basically a long formula with multiple IF conditions that you need to account for.  The most common usage of this formula is to assign ... Continue Reading >>

The Most Popular Excel Websites Based on Alexa Ranking

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When I started MBA Excel, I never really gave much thought to Excel's broader web community, which I was implicitly joining.  At the time, I was really just posting Excel tips and tricks because I thought they were interesting and would be useful to fellow MBA students.  While my engagement and capacity to contribute to ... Continue Reading >>

Why You Should Be Cautious About Using Excel’s IFERROR Formula

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The IFERROR formula was designed to solve a common aesthetic problem that most of us have encountered when using Excel - when we know that there are errors in our data, but we'd prefer not to see Excel's standard error message notation.  Error messages usually consist of all caps lettering that is preceded with the "#" ... Continue Reading >>

The Ultimate Guide to VLOOKUP

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Learning the VLOOKUP formula is, for most people, the first step taken towards becoming an advanced Excel user.  For me, this milestone actually occurred in 2004 during an internship at Microsoft in the company's Commercial Operations Division.  One of the senior analysts showed me the ropes by teaching me the formula.  While Continue Reading >>

How to Use OFFSET MATCH MATCH

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OFFSET MATCH MATCH is the final lookup combination I'll cover among the lookup formula options you have available to you in Excel.  Of all the different lookup options you have to do a two-way lookup, INDEX MATCH MATCH is still probably your best bet and the approach I would generally recommend.  However, OFFSET MATCH MATCH ... Continue Reading >>

How to Use the VLOOKUP HLOOKUP Combination Formula

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VLOOKUP and HLOOKUP are two of the most popular formulas in Excel and using them together is one of the first formula combinations that people learn.  While using INDEX MATCH for vertical lookups and INDEX MATCH MATCH for matrix style lookups are superior approaches, it's still a good idea to learn this formula combination and ... Continue Reading >>