CHAPTER 05 - ADVANCED EXCEL USING THE IF FUNCTION IN EXCEL TO

PROGRAM YOUR SPREADSHEETS

1. IF and Nested IF Function

In this short video tutorial we are going to take a look at the basics of the if function in Microsoft
Excel and for me this is a really exciting topic for me is because the IF function allows us as Excel
users to basically put in some programming into our Excel spreadsheets now it’s not exactly
programming but it’s quite similar to simple programming so let’s jump right in to looking at the
basics of the if function in Excel. Now what I have here is a simple spreadsheet that lists the results of
the national Spanish exam for my students. Now obviously these aren’t really my student’s names and
these are not really their scores. I’m aware of student privacy laws and would not put my real
students’ names and scores in a YouTube. But let’s say that these were my real students. I would like
to be able to see not just the raw score that each students got but I would also like to know whether
they passed or failed just by looking here at this column. There’s a couple of different ways that we
could do this but the if function in a excel is one of my favorites. So let’s look at how to do what I can
do is just click on this cell let ‘say D3 this is where I would like it to report whether Tom passed or
failed with his score of 94 once I’m on the cell I can just type equals to begin writing a formula.

Then I type IF and the reason I said that this is kind of programming an Excel spreadsheet is because
it reminds me of my days of learning basic as a young person in school but I did and I remember the
if-then statements and if-then statements are a very important part of programming so if this is true
then do this. That’s what we are going to create here an if-then statement so equals if-then I put in a
left parenthesis and as soon as I do that Excel gives me some tips and hints to help me to
successfully complete this formula this a feature in modern version of Excel where it kind of coaches
you and helps you and it’s really nice to have that reminder so equals if left parenthesis and then
I’m going to click on cell C3 because this is what I want to test if Tom’s score was greater than a
certain amount so I’ll click on Tom’s score but notice instead of putting 94 here it just puts the
cell c3 and that’s exactly what I want so equals if left parenthesis is greater than and then I put
in the cutoff point for pass or fail let’s say for this test 69% means fail and 70% means pass.
let’s just say in this case that that’s true now I have put then the portion of this formula in now if I
type then it’s not going to work when you’re writing a formula using the if function then is denoted
by the first comma so the first comma that you type in the formula represent them. Let’s go through
this if C3 is greater than 69 that’s what I have written here I want to print the word pass ad by
print I don’t mean printed out on a printer. I just mean print it on the screen and so to do that
to say that you want to print you put in quotation marks so there’s the first quote and I did put
a space there so I put space left quotation mark and then I’ll type the word pass and then
quotation mark now my second comma represents if not or if false. So if C3 is greater than 69
then print pass and if not then print fail. Now I need to put my close quote there and then I’m
supposed to put the right parenthesis right there but if you forget to do that its fine. It’ll work
anyway but you cannot this close quote.

It worked my formula with the if function worked it can tell that Tom passed now. Here we go I need
to type that all over again for Susan for Alyssa. Actually I don’t have to do that if you’ve watched
my other tutorials you know that I can use the auto fill handle to save me a lot of time so I’m
going to click here on pass and then I’m going to go to the lower right corner and if I put my
mouse exactly on that little green square then the mouse pointer changes to a black plus sign
and that means I’m about to use the auto fill handle which in this case will copy whatever is in
this cell. Click and drag and release and look it tell me exactly who passed and who failed based
on the criteria that I put into the if formula.
Okay so there you have the basics of using the if function in Excel. There’s a lot more that you can do
with it but this will help you get started.

2. COUNT and COUNTA Functions

USING COUNT AND COUNT A IN EXCEL

In this excel tutorial, we are gonna look at a couple of functions that I hope that you’ll find to be
useful and they are count and count a in addition we will also talk a little bit about the status bar and
how you might use it so you can see here that I have a spreadsheet that’s pretty big there are many
different records here hundreds and hundreds of records and remember that that’s what we call each
of these rows basically a row that is filled in with data is a record this spreadsheet has hundreds of
records and what if I would like to know exactly how many there are. Of course, I could just scroll
down quite a ways and look at the data and just keep going down until I find a blank row but after a
while that gets harder and harder to do and less effective so let’s learn how to set up a formula using
the function count or count a to help you to count the number of records that you have and to do this.
I’m gonna browse over to the right and find an empty cell and here’s an empty cell that’s the one I’m
gonna use now. Of course you could do this in any number of other places this is just the example that
I’m showing so here in this cell I’d like it to tell me how many total records are in this Excel
spreadsheet first thing I need to do after selecting the cell is tap an equal sign and then I’m
gonna type in the word count left parenthesis and then do I want it to count let’s say I want it to
count the total number of records that have units sold I’ll just click n column E. It highlights the
entire column and you can see here at the right that it’s put e through e which in effect means
the entire column and then at this point I should put in the closed parenthesis but you don’t
really have to do that.

So, I’ll just tap enter on the keyboard and it tells me that I have 700 records. In this spreadsheet that
have a number of units sold. Now of course I could go up here and I could just type in something like
total records with sales so I could label that column and what it means now what if instead of having
it count the total number of records with units sold. What if I would have said count left parenthesis
an had it just count the first column here right every one of these records I would assume has
something in the first column so if I would have selected column A and tapped enter take a look at the
number that it return to zero. Why did it return 700 when I counted units sold but it return to
zero. The reason why is because the count function that I’m using here that only counts cells in
that range that have a number in them and and so because my column a does not have any
numbers it’s just words its government mid-market channel partners. These are words only
know numbers so because of that they aren’t counted and it returns a number of zero. So let’s
see how to see fix that. If you want to count the total number of records but you want it to include text
this is what you would have to do this cell equals count and then add the letter A and to be honest I’m
not sure what that A signifies maybe it just means letters not just number but letters or maybe it
signifies all count all. Anyway count a left parenthesis and now if I select column A the entire column
tap enter on the keyboard look at the number it returns for me 701. Now lets browse down the page a
little bit and take a look at Wyatt said 701. You can see because I chose count a instead of just count.
It included this first cell. Cell a1 in the tally and so that’s how it came up with 701.

When I simply used count with column E if you remember it counted all of the cells that had numbers
only and so units sold was not included in that tally therefore the end result was just seven hundred.
So I hope that you can see some ways that count and count A could be useful to you.
Before we end though I want to also point out that there is a much faster way to get similar
information although sometime you will just want to use count a and count and so it’s important to
know those. But let’s say just at the spur of the moment you need to know how many records are here
in column H and all you have to do without setting up a formula at all is just click on the column H
and look what it does down here on what we call the status bar. We have some automatic
information that’s brought to us by Excel and one of those bits of information is the count so it
tells me right there’s a count of 701 records in column H. It also gives me the sum of all of the
numbers that are in column H and so that’s a huge sum that I have there and it gives me the
average of the numbers in column H. That’s with zero work on my part there’s no formula.
There’s no functions used I simply just click on the columns and gives me that information.
Now what if I pick a column that has only words like column a or b then it cant give me as much
data but it does give me a count still.

Just so you know you can customize the information it does give you. You can right click on the
status bar and it gives you the opportunity to make some changes to the information that’s brought to
you. I’m going to clicks here on sale price to illustrate that a little bit better I can now right click and I
could add minimum and maximum and so now I can look at this and see the cheapest thing that’s for
sale in the spreadsheet sells for $7 and the most expensive sells for $350. So in some cases this status
bar will give you all information you need and you won’t need to create a count or count a formula.

3. SUMIF, SUMIFS, AVERAGE IF, AVERAGE IFS

3. 1 THE EXCEL SUMIFS FUNCTION

This function is just a fantastic function very useful very helpful. you can see I have a simple
spreadsheet here that serves as a movie inventory for my dvd and blu-ray collection and lets say I
would like to figure out how much money I’ve spent over the years on dvds on blu-rays or maybe on
different genres of movies so this calls for a sum function and could do a typical sum function here or
use auto sum but that would give me the total of everything so what if I just want a list of all the blu-
rays and the total cost for them well I could filter the data I could deselect dvds and just show blu-rays
and things like that and then do a sum function just of the blu-rays but that can get time-consuming
and what if there’s not just two options what if there’s five or six like in the case of genres so what we
can do is use a sumifs function. let me demonstrate here in I3 Im just going to type in cost of blu-rays
and the I’ll tap a couple of times and type in cost of dvds. Okay so right here I would like the total
cost of my blu-ray collection to appear. I would start by typing equals and then use my function
sumifs left parenthesis and excel shows us what it’s looking for it want the sum range so what is
it that we want it to add up. Well we want it to add up the cost paid. So I’ll click and drag to get
the whole sum range and now if I only have 20 or 30 rows or records to select. that’s a good way
to do it but what if I had a thousand records and I wanted excel to examine all of them to see
what to add up. clicking and dragging is not going to be a great option so instead what you do is
you click on the topmost record that you care about hold CTRL+Shift+tap the down arrow on
the keyboard that will automatically highlight the information from the point that you selected
all the way down. Okay so ive got the sum range now put in a comma and now I need to find the
criteria range. So I want the criteria range to be this format column. So I’ll click here on blu-
ray control shift down so it looks through all of those searching for what well that’s what I put
in next comma what am I searching for what is the criteria. Well it’s blu-rays so I could type out
blu-ray in quotes or I could simply click here on B2 to show excel what I’m looking for I’m
looking for the word blu-ray. Let’s just leave it in quotes. I’ll put in the right parenthesis and then
tap enter on the keyboard and you see what it did. Excel searched column B looking for the word blu-
ray and when it found it added the cost paid or the amount paid for that blu-ray to all of the other costs
of blu-rays from this entire sheet. This is a very powerful time saving function that we have here. Lets
do the same thing now but with dvds. I’ll type =sumifs(the sum range) what do I want it to add up.
I want it to add up at least some of these numbers. Now I can go back up here to continue my
formula or sometimes it’s easier just to go up here to the formula bar comma what’s my criteria
range that’s here I select the topmost record that I want it to search. control shift down it selects
everything and the up here in the formula bar comma what do I want it to find well in this case
I want it to find dvds. Now this time instead of putting the word dvd inside of quotation marks.
I just want to click on it just to show you that that is another option so I can click there put in
the right parenthesis tap enter 71 . Now I could format this to look like dollars and there we have it.
It’s summing up the cost paid if the format is blu-ray or in this case dvd. Now because the second
example is based on this cell b5 watch what happens if I type in blu-ray there. It updates the amount
because it is not based on something in quotes this one is based on whatever is in B5. I’ll change that
back to dvd and it changes the results again. Now there is reason it’s called some ifs and not just
sum if and that’s because you can do more than one sum if at a time. so lets look at how to do
that. what if I want to know the total amount spent not just on dvds but specifically mystery
dvds. How would I do that. Well =sumifs left parenthesis I want to add up the cost paid control
shift down. I’ll go up here to the formula bar comma the criteria range. It’s right here I want it
to search B2 all the way through the bottom so control shift down and then I put a comma in the
formula bar. I’m searching for dvds, I’ll just click here on this B7 in this case where the word
dvd is and then I put a comma in so that’s my first if. But look because I put a comma excel is
now expecting another criteria range criteria range 2. In addition to dvd im looking for
mysteries. So I’ll go to up here click on F2 in this case control shift down to get the whole
column and then back up in the formula bar comma and what is the actual criteria. What is it
that we’re looking for we’re looking for mysteries? So as you can see this gets fairly complicated if
you have more than one criteria in your sumifs formula. So this is all lit up in different colors but let’s
see it it worked I’ll put a close parenthesis tap enter and ive only spent $24 on mystery dvds in my
collection and you can see that that’s true just by browsing down fifteen dollar mystery dvs plus 9
dollar mystery dvd.

3.2 The Excel AVERAGEIFS Function

In this video, I will show you how to use excel AVERAGEIFS function and the sample spreadsheet I
have for this which you can find in the description below, has a list of fictional student’s name, grade
level, student number, and test score. And I have already calculated the quartile scores, top scores,
bottom scores, etc. But what I really want to know at this point is what is the average scores for ninth,
tenth, eleventh graders on this test. And there are very steps that I could do this. I could filter out the
data that I don’t need, and I could create an average formula. But, there’s a lot of steps there.

AVERAGEIF calculates the average of the numbers in a range that meet supplied criteria. Criteria can
be supplied as numbers, strings, or references. For example, valid criteria could be 10, ">10", A1,
or "<"&A1.

The average range argument is optional. When average range is not provided, AVERAGEIF if will

calculate the average of numeric values in the range argument. When average range is
provided, AVERAGEIF will calculate the average of numbers in average range.

AVERAGEIF criteria can include logical operators (>,<,<>,=) and wildcards (*,?) for partial
matching.
AVERAGEIF is in a group of eight functions in Excel that split logical criteria into two parts (range +
criteria). As a result, the syntax used to construct criteria is different, and AVERAGEIF requires a cell
range for range arguments, you can't use an array.

AVERAGEIF will automatically ignore empty cells, even when criteria match. In other words,
AVERAGEIF will not include empty cells that meet criteria as zero in the average. AVERAGEIF
returns #DIV/0! if no cells in range meet criteria.

The AVERAGEIF function can only apply a single condition. If you need to apply multiple criteria,
use the AVERAGEIFS function.

The AVERAGEIF function in Excel calculates the average of cells that meet one criteria.

AVERAGEIFS calculates the average of cells that meet multiple criteria.

The AVERAGEIF Function is an Excel Statistical function, which calculates the average of a given
range of cells by a specific criterion. Basically, AVERAGEIF calculates central tendency, which is
the location of the center of a group of numbers in a statistical distribution. The function was
introduced in Excel 2007.

Instead, I'm going to just use the excel averageifs function. To do this click here in cekl J4, type
equals averageifs left parentheses. The idea behind the averageifs, is that the only one to average
something, if it meets certain criteria. You can see here, excel giving me hints about what is looking
for. So, this point it wants the average range, what is the that will be averaged. Well, the score that's
what I'm looking for the average score. Here I have the range that has the scores and I could click and
drag to highlight the range and now works perfectly in this case. But what is the spreadsheet has a
thousand records, or ten thousand records. Clicking and dragging is not going to be practical. Instead,
what you can do is to click on the tab most cell hold ctrl+shift and top the down arrow on the
keyboard. That will select the range, from the above range all the way down. Now we put a comma
and excel is now looking for criteria range number 1. What is the criteria that's going to tell excel that
they should average at test score.

The criteria is the grade level, I need to select the grade the level. Hold ctrl and shift tab down to
select the all of the grade levels. And put in comma and a lot times, doing it complicated formula like
this. It is better to go up to the formula bar and use that to enter the information.

=averageifs(average_range_criteria_range1, criteria1,(criteria_range2_criteria2)

There's a reason it called averageifs, with an s at the end. That's because, you can actually do more
than one criteria, in the formula. For example, if I were to add another column, just by right clicking
on E and selecting insert that's a column E is where the list feeder school, the middle or junior school
where the schools came from.

4. LEFT, RIGHT, and MID

Using LEFT RIGHT & MID Functions in Excel

In this tutorial, I will show you how to use the mid, left, and right functions in microsoft excel,
sometimes called string functions. What thereoften use for is to extract bits of information from
existing text or numbers. You can see here in this spreadsheet; I have a context list. But the names and
dates and when this names re added to the list. We have addresses, phone numbers etc. But for these
example, I would like to extract the area codes from the phone numbers and have them in the separate
column, and I would like to extract some other information as well. I am going to do it by using the
left, right, and mid functions. Let's first look at area code, here we have a phone numbers and I would
like to extract just the area codesm to do that, all we have to do is click in celll E2 in this case, type =
and use the left functions

=Left(text,(num,chars))

The MID function extracts a given number of characters from the middle of a supplied text string.
MID takes three arguments, all of which are required. The first argument, text, is the text string to
start with. The second argument, start_num, is the position of the first character to extract. The
third argument, num_chars, is the number of characters to extract. If num_chars is greater than the
number of characters available, MID returns all remaining characters.

Use the MID function to extract from the middle of text. Use the LEFT function to extract text from
the left side of a text string and the RIGHT function to extract text starting from the right side of text.
The LEN function returns the length of text as a count of characters. Use FIND or SEARCH to locate
an unknown start position.

Notes

num_chars is optional and defaults to 1.

MID will extract text from numeric values, but the result is text

Number formatting is not counted or extracted.

LEFT function:

The left function is used to extract the leftmost characters of a string.

Syntax:

=LEFT (text, [num_chars])

RIGHT function:

The right function will extract the rightmost part of the text.

Syntax:

=RIGHT(text, [num_chars])

MID function:

The MID function extracts the number of characters from the middle of a text string. 

Syntax:

=MID (text, start_num, num_chars)

5. VLOOKUP, MATCH and INDEX

Advanced Excel - VLOOKUP Basics

In this Advanced Excel tutorial. I'm going to show you the basics of using the VLOOKUP function.

VLOOKUP - can really be quite a powerful tool for you and Excel.

- You can do several different things that can be useful.

But in this tutorial, like I said, we're going to look just at the basics of how to use it. And in this
tutorial I'm using one of the spreadsheets that I made in past tutorials. If you haven't seen my Excel
Basics tutorial, my intermediate Excel tutorial and also the series of advanced Excel.

You really should go back and watch those. But in those tutorials, I created this spreadsheet. That's a
movie inventory of movies that I have, and it's quite a short list, but for the sake of this tutorial, let's
imagine that there are a thousand or 2,000 or 5,000 records here in this spreadsheet instead of just 20
or 30 movies.

Let's pretend that there's 2000 movies and I'm also going to have you pretend that instead of just six or
seven Columns of data, imagine that there's 20 different columns, you know, one of the columns lists.
The duration of the movies, another one lists the star of the movie.

Imagine just a pretty big spreadsheet with lots of columns and lots of Records. Lots of rows.

One of the challenges that we have when you get a huge spreadsheet like that is, how do I pull out
the data that I want to see? And that I want to think about from a spreadsheet and I'm going to show
you how to use VLOOKUP to do that.

She's one of the best ways to think about, VLOOKUP is to think of it as being similar to looking in
the index of a book to find out what is in the book or looking through a catalog to look up something
that you might want to buy.

VLOOKUP - you can find the part number.

- You can find the cost and things like that. Another comparison would be that, it's
similar to looking up someone in a phone book.

- You look up their name and you find their address or their phone number.

So, in this spreadsheet again imagining that it's Much bigger than it actually is.

Let's say that because it's so big. I find it hard to know what the rating is of a particular movie, and I
would like to be able to type in the name of a movie and find out exactly what the rating is for that
movie to do that.

I'm going to need two cells and so I'm going to use these two cells here and I'm going to go to this
cell, and I'll type in equals VLOOKUP and notice as soon as I do that, I get a pop-up that is going to
hopefully help me to do this. Mila correctly.

I'll put in the left parenthesis, and it gives me some more details. It says that I need to.
Now put in a lookup value, a table array, a column index number, and a range, lookup. And each of
those notice is separated from the rest with a coma.

So, lookup value comma table array, comma column index. Number comma range lookup. Now, the
official name for each of these four different sections of this formula is argument. Each of these is an
argument.

So, this is argument number one, two, three, and four. So, let's look at argument one. First. It's asking
for the lookup value.

So basically, what is it, that I know? What is it that I'm going to look up information about but it's
something that I already know. So again, think of going to a library, you know, the name of the book
that you want.

Let's say it's the book A Wrinkle in Time, which is an awesome book written for young adults, but I
think it's great for anyone and I hear Disney is soon to make it into a movie. But anyway, say at the
library you would like to look up where to find that book. What you know, is the name of the book in
that case. It's a Wrinkle in Time. So that's the lookup value.

Now, in this case. I would like the lookup value to be changeable. I would like to be able to type in.
Let's say The Princess Bride and have it. Tell me PG or the Martian and have it tell me PG-13. And
so, because I wanted to be changeable. I'm just going to click on cell h8. Look there. So, basically,
whatever I type in cell h8, that will become the lookup value.

All right, I'll put a comment in there next. It wants the table array, and if you watched my Excel
Basics tutorial, you know, the term range - and that's basically what this table array is.

Table Array - It's a range of your spreadsheet that you want Excel to look at.

And to be careful. I really want to include all of the columns that I have here. Now, you may not want
to when you do this yourself, but I want to go, In and choose A3 through F-22.   So that'll be all of the
actual data from my spreadsheet. It's not going to include some of this other stuff that I put in later.

So, to put that range into the formula. All I have to do is click on it and drag to select that range
that I want to look through. Now that's really easy when it's such a small spreadsheet, but imagine a
giant spreadsheet. Like I asked you to pretend that this is in that case, it wouldn't be practical to click
and drag. So that's okay. You could just go in and type a 3 through and that's indicated by a colon F-
22.   Okay, great. So, I've done the first argument and the second argument.

Now, onto the third argument, the third argument - is it wants to know a column index number. So,
what this is asking for, it's asking for you to pick one of the columns now, it's not looking for column
a column B, column C. No, in this case. It's not what it's looking for, is, whatever the table array, is
that you selected. Whatever that first column in the array is, that's number one. Then number two,
number three, number four, number five, number six.

Now, what if I haven't been included, column A In the table array that I selected. What if I had started
here in B3 instead of a three. Well, then this would be column 1. This would be column to. So, it
doesn't have to correlate to the ABCDEF. It can just be whatever it is that you selected for the table,
array, or you, click and drag to highlight.
The far-left column is column 1, then column, two and column three then call them forth, then call
them 5.

So now I'm going to do that argument. I'll put in a comma to separate the second argument and the
third argument. And how do I know? Each column to select. Well, the column I select, is the column
that has the information that I want to draw out. So, if you remember my example, I want to be able to
type in the name of a movie and find out what its rating is. So that means I want column C. But
remember I've got to put it as a number. So I go to the array, the table array that I highlighted. And I
say, okay, this is the first column. This is the second.

So, I want the third column. So, I type in 3 comma next, it wants a range lookup. And this is kind of
tricky and a little confusing for me as well. As for many people. Basically, what this is asking is there
a requirement that h8 be an exact match to what's in the spreadsheet and this is mostly useful, I think
with numbers.

So for example, let's say instead of typing in names of movies. What if we typed in the date that the
movie was purchased, if I were to type in 2007, it would produce a PG, but what if I typed in 2006
and what? Is no. 2006 entry here. Well, if I in this fourth argument in the range lookup, if I have it
set to be TRUE - then it will look for an approximate match. It'll find. Basically, whatever is the
closest.

If I type in the word FALSE - then it's going to require an exact match. If you don't type in the exact
match, it's not going to produce the results that you're looking for. In this case, I'm going to leave it as
false.

So, I'm going to require the exact match and then you're supposed to put in the right parenthesis, but
you don't really have to. So, I'll just type in enter and look. It's giving me a message saying the value
is not available. So, this is an error. Now the reason it's showing me an error code is because there
is nothing typed in this cell here.

So, let's test it out. I'm going to type in, I Am Legend. Let's see what happens. Look, it says PG-13.
So, that seemed to work pretty well.

Let's try It again, I'll type in Groundhog Day. So, I type in Groundhog Day hit enter, and it's PG.
Now. Once you have done this, if you've set up a VLOOKUP like this, if you regret how, you've laid
it out on the screen, like I do a little bit.

Let's see what we can do to make it so that you type the word here and it tells you on the right
whether it's PG, I think that would look a little better. So, to do that. I'm just going to double click
here and I can see up here in the formula bar. That's the formula. I'll just copy that and then I'll paste
it here and notice that it gives me an error. Again, so I need to double click on it and look at my
formula and see where it messed up, because I copied it from one column to the next. Look, it shifted
everything to the right a little and also down because I moved down one so I can repair this formula
just by clicking on the first argument, clicking and dragging to highlight it. You can also do this up
here in the formula bar.

And then I'll click on h8. Next, we go on to the second argument, which is the table. Array table
array was changed quite a bit. I'm just going to click and drag, but remember, Were with a larger
spreadsheet, you would need to just type in the cell names that would be much faster and the column
index number is still valid 3 and the range lookup false. So now I can hit return or enter on the
keyboard and I can actually delete the one that's above. So now I have a space to type in the movie
name and it tells me the rating off to the right.

Okay, let's do another example just to test it out. I'll type in The Giver and it changes to PG-13.

So, I hope that you found this tutorial to be helpful.

This is just the beginning of what VLOOKUP can do for you. But to be honest, this is how I use it.
Most often just as a way to create kind of like a form that I just fill out. I type in the name of
something or the part number of something and then it tells me other data.

So, like I said at the beginning, it's kind of like looking up a book at the library and finding
information about the book or looking up somebody's name in the phone book and getting their
address or getting their phone. A number, or the city that they live in.

Now, if I wanted to, of course, I could highlight these and I can change them to be bold and centered
and things like that, and kind of create a nice little space here that it's a tool basically that I can click
and type in to get the information that I'm looking for.

Now. There are a couple of rules. You need to know if you're going to use VLOOKUP. Probably the:

 First rule is that you need to have your data in vertical columns.
o So, I have column titles here and the lists of items, go vertically.
o Right information about those items in the list, go horizontally, but the actual different
records go vertically.

In columns. It has to be that way and the reason why is because VLOOKUP the V means vertical.

So, if you have your spreadsheet set up the other way, it wouldn't work.

There is such a thing as HLOOKUP. So horizontal, but anyway, that's rule number one that you
need to have your data arranged vertically, in the spreadsheet in columns.

 Second rule is that the information that, you know, that you're going to be typing in the Box,
basically has to be to the left of the data that you want to find.

So, the data that I know in this case is the names of the movies, right? That's what I'm going to be able
to remember and produce and type in this box. So that in my spreadsheet that needs to be to the left.
Left of the information. I want to look up and find.

In this case, the rating, if your spreadsheet is not set up that way, you need to move the column that
has the information that you're going to be able to type in the Box. You want to move that to the left
because that is a requirement.

 So, if you keep those two rules in mind, you should be able to start using VLOOKUP
successfully. So, I hope that you found this video to be helpful.
5.1 How to Extract Data from a Spreadsheet using VLOOKUP, MATCH and INDEX

When you have a lot of data on a worksheet and you want to extract some of that data to use on
other worksheets, the VLOOKUP match and index functions are great ways to do it.

These functions work in any version of Excel on Windows or Mac. And they also work on the web
in Google Sheets, and also on the web versions of excel.

With the VLOOKUP function and the V stands for vertical, you have data arranged down
columns.

And by the way, there is also an HLOOKUP function where you have data arranged across rows
H is horizontal and it works the exact same way as you look up. So, there's really no need for me to
cover that.

In this tutorial. You can grab actual data from a worksheet like you see here and use it another
sheets. Whereas the match and index functions - are really concerned with the positioning of data
where your data are located rather than what is the actual value of the data.

If you want to follow along in this tutorial, using your own workbook, go right ahead. If you'd like to
use the sheet that I have here on screen. You can see it's called VLOOKUP example, you can
download this from the touch plus website right here on the page where you're watching this tutorial.
And before we actually start clicking around and writing formulas. I want to give give you a little bit
of info on how VLOOKUP works.

VLOOKUP - links to different tables and they could be on the same worksheet or more likely on
different worksheets, even in different workbooks, using a unique identifier.

And the unique identifier that we're going to use in this tutorial is going to be an order number, but
in other situations, it could be other things.

You can think of it, sort of like as a serial number, if you work with databases, you might be
familiar with the concept of a primary key. So, with this table in mind.

Let me explain how the syntax works like any function.

We start off with an equal sign (=) and then you have the name of the function, VLOOKUP
and open parenthesis.

 =VLOOKUP(

There are three (3) required arguments in one optional argument.

 The first argument is what's called the lookup value and that's that unique identifier that
we were talking about.
 =VLOOKUP(lookup value

o And in are example, that's going to be the order # (number) now because you have
to have commas separating the arguments in any function after you. It in the lookup
value, type in a comma.
  The second argument, is the table range.
 =VLOOKUP(lookup value, table range

o An example, that's going to be the entire table. But keep in mind. It doesn't always
have to be that. Then we put in a comma.

 The third argument is the column number.

 =VLOOKUP(lookup value, table range, column #

o Now, let's say we want to get the sale amount and you can see here. That's the last
column in this table. In this instance. That's column number (8) eight. Now, don't
get that confused with the fact that you can see here. It's column h. There's no law
that says that the table has to start in column. A.

So, let's say, for example, if we start the table in column B, then the sale column is still going to be the
eighth column, but it's going to be in column I instead of column H. So that's why we're referring to
the actual column number of the data table. Not the column of the worksheet.

 Anyway, after you put in the column number, you put in a comma and then that optional
argument at the end is true or false.
 =VLOOKUP(lookup value, table range, column #, true/false)

And this could be a little confusing. In this instance, we're going to say false. And what that means is
this.

False - means don't give me an approximation, it gives me an exact amount.

True - means an approximation is, okay.

Now, there are times when an approximation is, alright, but when we're looking at order numbers and
what we want to plug in an order number and find the sale amount of that order number, we really
don't want an approximation and then, of course, we close the function with a matching parenthesis.

One other thing because we're Going to put this entire table in a formula. We need to make sure that
they're referring to the table with an absolute reference because we're going to put in the
VLOOKUP function. And then we want to autofill down that is we want to copy and paste down the
formula, all the way down, a couple hundred rows, understanding absolute references is beyond the
scope of this tutorial, but suffice to say it could be a little messy when you're using an absolute
reference in a long form.

So, what I find it's easier to do is to create a range name. When you give a name to arrange, like to
this whole table that we have, and you could use that name in your formulas first.

I'll show you how to create a range name in Excel and works the same way and Windows or Mac and
then I'll show you how to create a range name in Google Sheets.

Now, the range itself. You have a choice, you can have it include the column headers, or you could
have it be just the data below the column headers, and the grid. Conversion of this tutorial, I included
the column headers.
So just to be a little different this time. I'm going to include only the data and not the actual column
headers.

So, what I'm going to do is I'm going to click over here on Cell A5 - so that's the first cell of actual
data. And I'm going to select down and across to the last cell here. So, in Windows, I'll press control
shift end. (CTRL + Shift)

If you're using a Mac, you want to press command shift in.

And you see that selects all the way down and across to the last self. Now to apply the name, I click
up here in the name box, now not on the drop-down button on the actual box here. And when you do
that, you see that cell reference gets highlighted and I'm just going to call it data. You could call it
almost anything you want. You can't have spaces or dashes in the name though, and you're limited to
33 characters.

So, I'll just call this data and press the ENTER key. And there it is. You can see that data is up there
in the name box, and we know that. It works because I can put somewhere over here. And then when
I click this down arrow and choose data, you can see it's selected. And again, I did not include the
column headers.  

Reading range names is a little different in Google Sheets. So here I have the same exact worksheet
and you can see I'm in my browser.

So, I'll click on the same first, bit of data. We can't select from a cell down and across in Google
Sheets. You have to select first across and then down or first down and then across.

So, I'll press control shift, right-arrow or if you're on the Mac, command shift, right arrow. And now,
I'll press control shift. Down arrow on the Mac, command shift down arrow.

Now that I've done that, I go up to the Data menu and over here. I choose Named and protected
ranges. And then in this box over here, I'll call it data and then click done and you can see it's over
there and then I'm done with that. I can close this little panel with that X.

So, in this tutorial, this is the only thing that's different between Google Sheets and Excel.

Okay, so let's enter some Formulas already enough talking.

Right now, I'm on the source data sheet. Let's click on the sale amounts sheet. And you can see I
already have the order numbers.

And what we want to do is use the order number to look up the sales amount like I was talking
about.

So, let's start entering, the formula is a equals VLOOKUP (=vlookup), and if you get that little syntax
are, you don't have to type the whole thing? Just press the Tab Key and it gives us a little bit of syntax
help in the lookup value. =VLOOKUP

We know, is that order number. So, I click that and I type a comma. Now, the Table array, that's the
table we had. =VLOOKUP(A5,
So, we don't have to go back to the source data sheet and select all that and make it an absolute
reference because we already called a data. So, all I have to do is type the word data.
=VLOOKUP(A5,data

Now if you did not create the range name, you will have to go to the source data sheet and select
the whole thing and make it an absolute reference.

Also, Excel understands that oh, yes. I did create that range name. So, it's in here.

I'll show you also a little trick. Let me just backspace over that.

Let's say I have a lot of range names or created that range name a long time ago. I don't remember
what it is.

I could always press the F3, key on the keyboard and get the Paste Name box and just double click it
and I'll type of comma and then it asks me for the column index number we said before that's column
eight that's where the sales figure is put in a comma and here's even giving us a little syntax up.

We want true or do we want false? Who want an exact match. So you can type the word, false, or you
could double click it. And it puts it in close parentheses and right and it's 40.

And in fact if we go back here, so we're seeing who can see how yes indeed. That's correct.

Let's go back here. And we want to autofill this, so click the cell. And if you're not all that familiar
with auto-filling you notice that there's a little dot in the lower right corner of the cell and you put the
mouse pointer over the dot and mouse pointer becomes this little Crosshair.  

And even if you know autofill, here's something that most people don't know. You don't have to
click and drag this down for 200. Whatever rest.

All you have to do is double-click the Crosshair   and it fills in all the way down.

So, you can scroll all the way down. And you can see it's filled in all the way. That's because there are
no gaps in column. A, if there is a gap somewhere in column A then at autofill, just kind of stopped
where that Gap is.

If you want to practice this on your own you could go here and maybe to column C or column D and
go and use VLOOKUP to find, maybe people's last names or the states.

So, let's take a look at the Match function. We can click the match tab here in the worksheet. As I
said earlier.

The Match function - isn't really concerned with the value of data BUT location of data actually
kind of like the game of Jeopardy.

You tell it what the value is and the match function tells you where the value is.

Kind of if you think of maybe you're walking down the street and you say to somebody who we were
as number 135, and they tell you. Oh, number 135 is the fourth building down.
MATCH function

So, let's talk a little bit about the syntax of the match function.

We say equals match open the parentheses, right? Just like any function and then you put in the
lookup value. That's just like what we were talking about before that's going to be the order number in
a comma and you have the table range. Table range is the same as what we were talking about before.
And our case. We're going to use the entire table, put in a comma, and then you enter the TYPE.

=MATCH(lookup value, table range, type)

Now, what's that type all about?

Type - when you have that value, you're looking for, you may have value that's just above it or just
below it.

Syntax

=MATCH(lookup value, table range, type)

Type

Closest Above

Target Value

Closest Below

And to determine whether or not either of those are acceptable, that type.

Type

Closest Above -1 Values must be in descending order

Target Value 0 Values can be in any order

Closest Below 1 Default. Values must be in ascending order.

You can put in negative 1 (-1) 0 or a 1.

 Negative one (-1) - means you'll choose the number. That's the closest above it.

 Positive one (1) - it's the closest number below it.

 Zero (0) - it means you want an exact match.

Also with the match function, you have to be aware of, whether your data are sorted, in any particular
order, so:

 You have to have data sorted in descending order to use the negative one (-1) option.

 You have to have your data sorted in descending order. If you're going to use the positive
one (1) option and you can see, that's the default.

 If you don't care, if that's in one order another then you can use a zero (0).

And since we're looking for only one piece of data. We're looking for that order number. We need to
go in to find another range name.

So, let's go back to Source data and we're going to be concerned just with the order number.

So, we already have a range name - that's for the entire table.

Now, we just want a range name for the data going down, column A. So, kind of like we did before.

You want to click on Cell A5, press control shift, down arrow, or command shift down arrow on the
Mac.

Let's go up here. Click inside the name box. And I'm going to call this   order underscore number
(order_number).

Underscores, our okay, Dashes are not spaces are not OK and press enter.

If you're doing this in Google Sheets, use the same procedure that I showed you just before.

So, let's go back to the match worksheet and we'll put in the function.

Let's say equals match open the parentheses. Lookup Value. We said that's the order number comma.
Look up array, right? That's what we just put in the order number.

=match(lookup value,lookup array =match(A5,order_number,

If you want, you can press the F3, key. And you can see there's the TWO range names. Double click
(order_number) type in a comma (, ) and we have our values and ascending order.

So, I'm going to choose the one. Click it, this parenthesis and enter it.

=match(A5,order_number,1)

And now we can see that order 1013 is in the 13th position.

Now, if you have it included, the column headers and this would be showing 14.

And we could eyeball, is let's go back here and we can see there is order 1013 if we count from the
top.   That is the 13th, one down.

Finally. Let's talk about the Index function.

And I'm going to click on the index tab of this worksheet.

The Index function - is kind of like the opposite of the match function and it deals with two
Dimensions.

Two (2) Dimensions:

1. Rows
2. Columns

So, we tell it, here's the road number and the column number. I'm looking for which means a
particular cell now return to me the value that's in that particular cell.

INDEX function

So, let's take a brief. Look at the syntax of Index function.

We say equals index open. The parentheses. First argument is the table range or data range. And
it's the entire table that we've been looking at, comma (,) and then you have the row number put in a
comma and then optionally the column number.

=INDEX(table range, row number, [column number])

Now, this is a little weird because the official documentation tells us that column number is optional,
BUT it's really the row number can also be optional and what that means is when you have a large
table, like, what we're working with, you do want a row, number, and column number.

But let's say YOU only have single row. Well, then you don't need to column number or if you only

have single column then you don't need a row number.

So let's put in the function, little going to be here on Cell C6. So I'm going to say equals index open at
the parentheses and just like before the range is the entire data range. You can see finds it for us, then.
Going to come up and we want row 9 comma, column 3, close, the parenthesis enter it.

=index(data,row 9, column 3) =index(data,A6,B6)

And now we can see that. That is somebody's last name.

Let's take a look. Go back to Source data and we can see there. It's the ninth row down and third
column over we go back here.

And let's say just for example, maybe I want to go to row 13 and see it's already changing column 4
then I have the state.

So, if I go back over here, you can see. All right, there it is. This is row 13 column 4.

So having these three functions that can look at a large worksheet and extract value, and positioning
of data are really great tools.

This way you can have one sheet that has all of the data and the universe and then individual sheets
where you're picking up, just those pieces of data that you need.

And All of the parts of excel that people ask me about VLOOKUP is Far and Away the most
comment.
6. Combining data from multiple cells with CONCATENATE

Combining Data From Multiple Cells in Excel

In this tutorial, I'm going to show you how to easily combine data from more than one cell in Excel.

So, let's look at this spreadsheet here. This is a customer relationship tracker for a hypothetical
company. And these are all customers of this company. You can see that. Their first name is here last
name in a separate column. The total amount of purchases that they've made from the company and
some other data.

So, what if I would like to combine some of this data together, let's say to produce a customer profile
and to put that information in one column here at the right.

So, I can just click here in G2 and I'll just type customer profile. Looks like it did not copy the format.
I'll just click here on the cell whose format I want to copy and I'll go here on the Home. Tab home,
ribbon, click the format painter, and then click here, and it makes the format the same. Okay.

So, watch How I can do this, how I can. Add the word Jina to the word Pullin and let's say the total
amount of purchases that they've made in dollars. So, I'll just click here and cell G3 and I'll type
equals (=). So, this cell equals (=) and I want it to equal Jina. So, I click on Jina. And then I also want
it to include the word Pullin, but if I click on Pullin, it changes to B3, so what if I click Jina Plus? And
hit return. Look Excel doesn't understand. It doesn't seem to compute. You know, how do you add a
name? Plus another name?

So, the way you to do this properly is you type = (equals) click on Jina (A3) and then you type an
ampersand or some people just call it the & (and) sign. So A3& (ampersand) Pullin (B3).

Now, watch what happens if I tap enter or return on the keyboard. It says JinaPullin it combined the
contents of cell A3 and the contents of cell B3.

=A3&B3
JinaPullin

Now, there's a problem here. There's no space between Jina and Pullin.

So, let's fix that. All I have to do to put a space in is after the empress and type in quotation, marks a
space, using the spacebar and then quotation marks again and then type an ampersand again.

=A3&B3 =A3&“ ”&

JinaPullin Jina Pullin

So, what this should do is it connects whatever is in A3 with a space and then it connects that with
whatever's in B3. So, I tap return or enter on the keyboard and it worked. (Jina Pullin)

Now. Let's change it even more. I want to add now the total purchases.

So I'll just add another Ampersand and I should probably put a space in there again, or maybe :
(colon). Let's try a colon and then I put the closed quote, another Ampersand and maybe I want
another space in there. So, I put in quote space close quote, another Ampersand. And now I'm going
to click on Total amount of purchases here and tap enter on the keyboard or return, if you're using a
Mac. And look what we have Jina Pullin $40.

=A3&B3 =A3&“ ”& =A3&“ ”&B3&“:”&“ ”&C3

JinaPullin Jina Pullin Jina Pullin: 40

If I really wanted to get picky with this I could go in and add a dollar sign. So, after the last
Ampersand quotation marks dollar sign quotation marks, I'll need another Ampersand tap return, or
enter on the keyboard. And now that looks just how I want it to look.

=A3&“ ”&B3&“:”&“ ”&C3 =A3&“ ”&B3&“:”&“ ”&”$C3”&

Jina Pullin: 40 Jina Pullin: $40

So, this is a very simple customer profile, but it lets We know the names of the customers who have
purchased the most from us over the years.

Now. Unfortunately, I'm going to have to do that again for every single one of these customers, right?

Well, actually, no, all I have to do is click on Jina, Pullin, $40 and go to the autofill handle.

I'm going to zoom in on this a little bit, but you can see it here. Anytime, you've clicked on a cell in
the lower right corner of that cell. There should be a very small square. You can see it there. It's
Green and that is the autofill handle.

Autofill handle - what it does is that it copies when you click and drag it copies whatever is in the
cell that is selected.

Now, sometimes it doesn't just copy it extends and if you haven't watched my tutorial on the autofill
handle, you really need to do that.

But in this case, I really do just want to copy whatever is in this cell. Now some of you might say no
you don't you don't want to copy Jina pulling $40. Well, if you think about it, that's not really what's
in this cell, if I double click on that cell or if I just click on it once and look up here at the formula bar.

You can see that this is actually a formula. It's not just Jina pulling $40.

So, I want to copy that formula down this column.

So, I'll click and hold that auto fill handle and just drag down the sheet and release. And look what it
did. It combined, the first name, the last name and combine that with the total sales from each
customer.

Now, just one thing to take note the results here in column G. The end up being treated like text. So,
these aren't really numerical. They have numbers included.

But if I were to do an autosum, it doesn't really know how to handle that, because these aren't really
numbers. They're just formulas that combine text with numbers. And the result is treated basically like
text.
And I really think the more you use Excel, the more you'll see opportunities to use the Ampersand
(&) - to combine data from more than one cell and pull that data together into one cell.

7. Creating data entry forms

Creating Easy Data Entry Forms in Excel

In this tutorial, I will show you an easy way to create data, entry forms in Excel and these forms.
Make it so much easier to enter records or data into Excel.

You can see here on the screen. I have a pretty simple spreadsheet. This is an employee list with
names, hire dates, employee numbers, and departments.

Let's say that a business has decided that they want to have an employee sheet and this Just the
beginning of setting up that employee list. Now. Imagine how time consuming and painful, it would
be to enter all of this data. For let's say, 200 employees. Yes, you can do it.

You can just click on the appropriate cell. You can type tab over type but doing it this way can lead
to more mistakes. And so, let's look at how to set up and easy data entry form in Excel.

The first step that I'm going to have to take, is to go up here to the quick access bar - this is a handy
bar where you can add additional tools and features that you want to be able to access easily and
quickly. That's why it's called the quick access toolbar.

And if you haven't already watched my previous tutorial on how to customize the quick access
toolbar. Please do so, but for the purposes of this video, I'm just going to click here on this button -
this is the customize quick access toolbar button. When you click that, it gives you a list of some of
the items that you can add to the quick access toolbar or take off the quick access toolbar.

But if Look toward the bottom of this pop-up menu. There's an option for more commands and I'm
going to click that. It takes me to a list of popular Excel commands.

But in this case, what we're looking for is not necessarily popular. So, I'm going to go down to either
all commands or commands not in the ribbon.

I'll just pick commands not in the ribbon. And what I'm looking for is form. That's what I'm trying to
create a quick, easy data, entry form. So I'm going to browse down. Look for form. There it is.

As I click on it and if you'll notice here on the right side, there are some items already in this list.
Compare those two. What's up above here on my quick access? Toolbar. It's the same things, the
same features are listed here, as are here in the upper left.

So, I want to add form to that list having selected form just click add. It's now added to this list.
And when I click on OK, it will now be added to my quick access toolbar. So, there it is. Now that I
have that button readily accessible to me. I will be able to easily create a data entry form for my
Excel spreadsheet.

Alright, the next thing we need to do is take this data that I have here in my spreadsheet and turn it
into a table. For some reason, that's a prerequisite of using these quick forms.
So how to turn this into a table. All I have to do is Click somewhere inside the data about here .
And then here on the Home tab, home ribbon in the Styles group. There's a button that says format
as table.

No, there is a faster way to do it. Once you've clicked anywhere in the data. You can just hold the
Ctrl key and tap T for table (CTRL + T) and that will bring up this pop-up.

And here Excel has tried to guess what? My data consists of and in 99% of the cases. It, does it
correctly. You'll notice that there's a dashed line, that's kind of moving across the top here and on
the left and on the right, that is outlining the shape of the table, and in most cases, it gets it
perfectly, correct.

If not, you may need to change some of the numbers here. You may need to click this and then
outline what you want to be included, or you might need to check or uncheck my table has headers.
I'm just going to click, OK, let's see if it works. It looks like it did. I can tell that Excel has identified
these items here as headers. So, I think that worked just fine.

And now, let's move on to the next step at this point. I just want to have clicked somewhere in the
table. So, I'll just make sure that I've done that. Click. And now I go up here to the quick access
toolbar and click the form button. Now notice what it did. It has identified 22, records or rows in this
table. It doesn't count the header row. It just skips it. But you'll notice that record. Number one is
Jina Pullin here at the left, but all of the data and information related to Jina and Pullin is listed
vertically. In this case, instead of horizontally.

Now, there are a couple of reasons why this is helpful.

One of them is, let's say you have a spreadsheet with like 14 columns or 15 columns. You wouldn't
want to have to click this bar, and drag to the right and type in the data or to tab over up to 14 times.
In order to enter in your data. It's kind of cumbersome to do it that way. And so, that's why you
might want to do what I'm showing here by creating an easy data entry form.

Now, if I click find next, look what it does. It goes to the next record. Marcelina Restrepo click.
Next again, Virginia Loftus and so forth and it's numbering those records here at the top, right? So I
can click through those.

Now. Let's say it's time to resume entering data for the employees of this company. I can click new
notice. It says, new record. I just click and next name. I'll type the next employees name. If I tap
tab, it does move to the next data entry cell hire date.

Now, you can just type that in the way you typically would maybe with the day, then the month and
the year. Or you can hold the control key and tap semicolon (CTRL + ;) and that puts today's date
into the form.

In this case. Gary Larson was not hired today. So, I will go ahead and change that to a different date,
put in the employee number and I can either click to the next cell in this entry form, or I can tab just
like I did before but in the department. And at this point, I can tap ENTER on the keyboard. It
inserts the record into my spreadsheet and gives me a new blank form.

If I close and Down the page, you can see there's Gary Larson, hire date, employee number, and
Department jumping back into the form is super easy. I just go up here on the quick access toolbar.
Click form. I'm right back in there. I want to enter a new employee and I simply resume.
So, if you do a lot of data entry, you're going to find yourself really prefering. These easy data entry
forms that you can create and use an Excel and it's really easy to do while we're here in this form
tool.

I want the Point out some of the other features and buttons that we have.

So, we've looked already at new notice that there's also Delete. So, this is a mistake. Obviously. I
don't know how I made that one but I can just click delete. Displayed record will be permanently
deleted. That's exactly what I want. So, I click OK and it's gone.

We also have a Find Previous button. So that goes from number 25 to number 24 to record number
23, Etc.

You can also Find Next that advances, the higher numbers.

Then we have a Criteria button and a Restore button.

Let's look at the restore button. So I'm going to click find previous a few times here. We have a
person named Eileen Osterberg and let's say that the company is considering changing her
Department from sales to customer service so I can just type that in.

But what if I realize that that was a mistake? I can just click restore and it goes right back to the way
it was before I started changing the data in this form.

So as long as you don't click close or tap enter on the keyboard, everything that you type here is easy
to undo just by clicking the restore button.

Okay, one button left to look at besides Close and that is Criteria.

The way Criteria works, is you click it and then you enter Criteria into this form and then Excel will
see if it can find one or more of the records here in the spreadsheet that match the criteria.

So for example, I would really like to find someone who has a name that includes the word Bob.
And the hire date doesn't really matter the employee number doesn't really matter, but the
department should be Communications. All right, so I have Bob and Communications at this point.
All I have to do is tap enter on the keyboard and look, it found Bob in Communications, there is.

Now, you may at first think that this number here in the upper right? Indicates that there are 25 or
18 Bob's in communication. But if you click next, you'll notice that's really all. There is just One
Bob in Communications.

So, what if I want to see everyone in Communications, not just Bob to do that.
 I'm going to close the form, open it back up, and go to Criteria, put in Communications tap ENTER
on the keyboard.

And now look, it found Regina Loftus if I click next Palma Neumeister and there is good old Bob
Bowe again.

So, I hope that you see how useful and Excel data entry form can be, you can take your data entry
tasks. That might be Horizontal. And it can make it vertical and notice that you can scroll. So, it
could be 10 15, 20 different bits of data that you're entering in and it makes them vertical not
horizontal.

And it gives you these tools at the right to also help you to search within the table that you've
created.

8. CREATING EASY DATA ENTRY FORMS IN EXCEL

This tutorial I will show you an easy way to create data entry forms in excel and these forms make it
so much easier to enter records or data into excel you can see here on the screen I have a pretty simple
spreadsheet this is an employee list with names hire dates employee numbers and apartments let’s say
that a business has decided that they want to have an employee sheet and this is just the beginning of
setting up that employee list now imagine how time consuming and painful it would be to enter all of
this data for let’s say 200 employees yes you can do it you can just click on the appropriate cell you
can type tab over type but doing it this way can lead to more mistakes so let’s look at how to set up an
easy data entry form in excel the first step that I’m going to have to take is to go up here to the quick
access bar this is a handy bar where you can add additional tools and features that you want to be able
to access easily and quickly as well it’s called the quick access toolbar and if you haven’t already
watched my previous tutorial on how to customize the quick access toolbar please do so but for the
purposes of this video I’m just going to click here on this button this is the customized quick access
toolbar button when you click that it gives you a list of some of the items that you can add to the
quick access toolbar or take off the quick access toolbar but if you look toward the bottom of this pop
up menu there’s an option for more commands and I’m going to click that it takes me to a list of
popular excel commands but in this case what we’re looking for is not necessarily popular so I’m
going to go down to either all commands or commands not in ribbon I’ll just pick commands not in
ribbon and what I’m looking for is form that’s what I’m trying to create a quick easy data entry form
so I’m going to browse down look form there it is I click on it and if you’ll notice here on the right
side there are some items already in this list compare those to what’s up above here on my quick
access toolbar is the same things the same features are listed here start here in the upper left so I want
to add form to that list having selected form I just click add and it’s now added to this list and when I
click on OK it will now be added to my quick access toolbar so there it is now that I have that button
readily accessible to me I will be able to easily create a data entry form for my excel spreadsheet
alright the next thing we need to do is take this data that I have here in my spreadsheet and turn it into
a table for some reason that’s a prerequisite of using these quick forms so how to turn this into a table
all I have to do is click somewhere inside the data about here and then here on the home tab home
ribbon in the styles group there’s a button that says format as table now there is a faster way to do it
once you’ve clicked anywhere in the data you can just hold the control key and tap T for table and
that will bring up this pop-up and here excel has tried to guess what my data consists of and in 99% of
the cases it does it correctly you’ll notice that there’s a dashed line that’s kind of moving across the
top here and on the left and on the right that is outlining the shape of the table and in most cases it gets
it perfectly correct if not you may need to change some of the numbers here you may need to click
this and then outline what you want to be included or you might need to check or uncheck my table
has headers I’m just going to click OK let’s see if it works it looks like it did I can tell that excel has
identified these items here as headers so I think that worked just fine and now let’s move on to the
next step at this point I just want to have clicked somewhere in the table as well I’ll just make sure
that I’ve done that I click and now I go up here to the quick access toolbar and click the form button
now notice what it did it has identified 22 records or rows in this table it doesn’t count the header row
it just keeps it but you’ll notice that record number one is Jina Pollan here at the left but all of the data
and information related to Jina Pollan is listed vertically in this case instead of horizontally now there
are a couple of reasons why this is helpful one of them is let’s say you have a spreadsheet with like 14
columns or 15 columns you wouldn’t want to have to click this bar and drag to the right and type in
the data or to tab over up to 14 times in order to enter in your data it’s kind of cumbersome to do it
that way and so that’s why you might want to do what I’m showing here by creating an easy data
entry form now if I click find next look what it does it goes to the next record Marcelina Restrepo
click find next again Regenia Loftus and so forth and it’s numbering those records here at the top
right so I can click through those now let’s say it’s time to resume entering data for the employees of
this company I can click new notice it says new record I just click and next name I’ll type the next
employees name if I tap tab it does and next name I’ll type the next employees name if I tap tab it
does move to the next data entry cell hire date now you can just type that in the way you typically
would maybe with the day than the month in. The year or you can hold the control key and tap
semicolon and that puts today’s date into the form in this case Gary Larson was not hired to day so I
will go ahead and changed that to a different date put in the employee number and I can either Click
to the next cell in this entry form or I can tab just like I did before but in the department and at this
point I can tap enter on the keyboard it inserts the record into my spreadsheet and gives me a new
blank form if I close and browse down the page you can see there’s Gary Larson hire date employee
number and department jumping back into the form is super easy I just go up here on the quick access
toolbar click form I’m right back in there I want to enter a new employee and I simply presume so if
you do a lot of data entry you’re going to find yourself really preferring these easy data entry forms
that you can create and use in excel and it’s really easy to do while we’re here in this form tool I want
to point out some of the other features and buttons that we have so we’ve looked already at new notice
that there’s also delete so this is a mistake obviously I don’t know how I made that one but I can just
click delete displayed record will be permanently deleted that’s exactly what I want so I click OK and
it’s gone we also have a find previous button so that goes from number 25 to number 24 to record
number 23 etcetera you can also find next that advances to higher numbers and then we have a criteria
button and a restore button let’s look at the restore button so I’m going to click find previous a few
times here we have a person named Eileen Osterberg and let’s say that the company is considering
changing her department from sales to customer service so I can just type that in but what if I realized
that that was a mistake I can just click restore and it goes right back to the way it was before I started
changing the data in this form so as long as you don’t click close or tap enter on the keyboard
everything that you type here is easy to undo just by clicking the restore button OK one button left to
look at besides clothes and that is criteria the way criteria works is you click it and then you enter
criteria into this form and then excel will see that can find one or more of the records here in the
spreadsheet that matched the criteria so for example I would really like to find someone who has a
name that includes the word Bob and the hire date doesn’t really matter the employee number doesn’t
really matter but the department should be communications alright so I have Bob and communications
at this point all I have to do is tap enter on the keyboard and look it found Bob in communications
there is now you may at first think this number here in the upper right indicates that there are 25 or 18
Bob’s in communication but if you click next you’ll notice that’s really all there is just one Bob in
communications So what if I want to see everyone in communications not just Bob to do that I’m
going to close the form open it back up and go to criteria put in communications tap enter on the
keyboard and now look I found Virginia Loftus I click next Palma Neumeister and there is good old
Bob again so I hope that you see how useful an excel data entry form can be you can take your data
entry task that might be too horizontally and it can make it vertical and notice that you can scroll so it
could be 10 15 20 different bits of data that you’re entering in and it makes them vertical not
horizontal and it gives you these tools at the right to also help you to search within the table that
you’ve created

9. FIXING COMMON ERRORS

9.1 FIXING COMMON EXCEL ERRORS- Part 1: DIV/0, N/A, & NAME?

In this tutorial, we're going to look at how to fix common Excel errors, and this is the first in a three
part series. In part one, we're going to look at the Div/0 error, the N/A error, and the name error. And
to help with this, I have a workbook with three unrelated spreadsheets. Each one is a good example of
one of those errors. If you would like to follow along with me in the description below this video, I
have a link that you can use to download this workbook, and it makes it so much easier to follow
along.

But let's get started first with the Div/0 error. You can see my spreadsheet here is tracking my
purchase history for some supplies. And you can see I'm getting a Div/0 error a couple of times here
in the spreadsheet. Well, what this stands for is dividing by zero. Dividing by zero, as you probably
know, is not possible.

And so because it's impossible when I try to do it, I get this error message in Excel. So what's
happening here? Well, I have a formula set up. You can see it here where what's happening is it's
dividing the total cost of a particular item tape, in this case by the quantity that I purchased, and it
gives me the total cost per item. So this is being divided by this.

Okay, so let's look at the next row here. I have nothing. Zero basically divided by zero. Well, that
produces an error message because it's not possible to divide zero by zero. It's not possible to divide
100 by zero either.

So that error message is accurate. It's telling me the truth. There's an error going on here. The thing is,
it looks so bad, it looks so ugly in my spreadsheet. So how could I fix that?

And you can see there's another example of it down here. Well, one way to fix it would be to not
divide by zero. So if I go out and buy a box of markers, let's say it's $6, and I get one box. Now that I
have something other than zero in this cell, it updates, and there's no error message. But what if I don't
want to buy a box of markers or don't need to?

Well, let's just zero those out. And now what I'll do instead is I'll change up my formula, so I'm going
to go back up here to sell F two click on the cell, and I'm going to delete what's there in the formula
bar. I, of course, could do the same thing here inside the cell. But sometimes it's nice to use this
formula bar. It's just a little bit cleaner sometimes.

So I'll type equals, and then I'll start out with something called if error. It's kind of a weird function to
use, but notice what it says. Returns value if error. If expression is an error and the value of the
expression itself. Otherwise, so this basically helps guard against errors and produces something if
there is an error.

Okay, so if error left parenthesis and now I'll put in the total cost for the tape. So D2. So I type in D2
divided by E2, and then I put in a comma, and then after the comma, look what it's expecting. It's
expecting the value if error. So if there is an error in cell F two based on dividing 60 by 32, if there's
an error, what do I want it to print on the screen?
Well, I could just put two quotes or a quotation Mark, a space and another quotation Mark, and then
close parenthesis, you really don't need the space in between, though. Now I'll just tap enter on the
keyboard and look, there wasn't an error, and so it just produced the result of D two divided by E two.
And now I'll drag that down all the way down to the bottom and release what changed? Well, the Div
zero errors went away. And why?

Because of this new formula, it's checking for an error. And if there is an error, I tell it to print nothing
in the cell, and I copied that down using the autofill handle. So that's true of all of this column. So
that's one way to handle it. Another way would be to.

Instead of putting nothing in the cell, I could put a message to the person who's looking at the
spreadsheet. I could type in something like no purchases. So that would explain why it's blank. There
have been no purchases. So I tap enter and notice that it updated the entire column, probably because
I'm in a table.

It did it that way. So now instead of the ugly error code, I get this no purchases message. So that's a
little bit about the Div zero error in Excel. Let's move on to another spreadsheet and look at a second
error that comes up from time to time. And this is the N an error.

And this comes up most often when you're using VLOOKUP or HLOOKUP or any other function or
tool in Excel where it's looking for a specific thing. So you can see here. I have a movie inventory and
I'm using VLOOKUP to tell me the rating of various movies so I could click here, type in the Martian
tap enter on the keyboard, and it tells me PG 13. So that's using VLOOKUP. If you haven't already
watched my tutorial on VLOOKUP, you're missing out.

You need to watch that. But for the purposes of this tutorial, let's just move on and watch what
happens when I type The Lion King. I tap enter and I get the NA error. So you can probably figure out
the reason why I'm getting NA because it's searching the spreadsheet. It's searching the data that I've
provided for the Lion King, and it's not available.

It's not finding it. Now watch what happens if I put the Lion King into this spreadsheet. So the Lion
King and I'll put in the 2019 version of it. So I've put that information in. Now let's go back up and try
it again.

The Lion King, I tap enter. It still doesn't work. I still get that NA error. Now, if you get an error like
that and you're pretty confident that the words that you're looking for are in the range that you're
looking in, that could be for a couple of different reasons. In this case, it could be that I've
accidentally put in too many spaces in a cell.

So for example, here the Lion King. Notice that there's an extra space after the G. When I search for
the Lion King without a space, it doesn't work. If I add a space in here after the G, will it work? Will
it fix it?

Yes, it does. But instead of fixing the search term here, there is a way to actually fix the data, and it
could be that other movie titles also have too many spaces included. So I want to repair that data to
make sure that there are no extra spaces to do that. There may be a better way, but this is how I would
do it. I would just right click here on column B and choose insert.

So that gives me a new column. And then here in the column I'll click on Sell B, three tap equals, and
then the word trim left parenthesis. I'm going to trim the title Star Wars, and then I should put a right
parenthesis. You don't really have to, but it's a good idea to get in that habit. I'll tap enter and it seems
like nothing changed.

And that's true. Nothing changed. But the reason why is because Star Wars didn't have an extra space
in it. But some of these other titles do. So now that that's done, I'll use the auto fill handle, click and
drag down the page to copy that formula.
And now I want to replace what's in column A with what's in column B. But the tricky thing is
column B is really made up of just formulas that depend on column A, so I do have to be a little
careful with this, but I'm just going to call this title as well. And then I'm going to click and drag from
title all the way down to the bottom of my data, and then I will copy that either by right clicking and
choosing copy or Control C to copy.

And then I'll click here and right click. But I don't want to just paste.

If I paste, there will be some errors. But if I go here to paste values, what it does is it converts these
formulas into actual values in this case titles of movies. So now I don't need this column anymore. I
can right click on B, choose Delete, and that should have cleaned up all of these titles, it should have
trimmed out extra spaces. And look, it worked.

So now when I type in The Lion King, it tells me the rating. Let me show you another example of
how you could have the correct data in the sheet, but it still gives you the NA error. A few years ago,
a movie came out called 42. So I'll just type in 42. I don't recall exactly the year it came out, but I'll
put in some data for it.

Okay, so now that that's in, if I do a search for 42, it's going to work. It finds it. It says it's PG 13, but
from time to time, that might not work for you. And if it doesn't, it probably has to do with the
number format. So right now this number in this cell is considered to be a number, but in some cases
it might be considered to be a text.

42 is actually the title of the movie. It's not really just a raw number. So if you're ever doing a
VLOOKUP and it gives you an NA error and you're dealing with numbers, you might consider
making sure that the column or row is formatted correctly either as text in this case or as numbers just
to make sure that these cells match the format of this sell. Now, similarly to my purchase history
example, I can fix this. I can make it so that if I type in a movie that's not in my collection, I don't get
this ugly error message.

9.2 FIXING COMMON EXCEL ERRORS

This video, is fixing common errors-part 2.

It's the second in a three-part series on some strategies to try, in order to fix common excel error. And
I have a spreadsheet here to go along with this video, I hope that you'll download it by looking in the
description below the video and this workbook should look pretty familiar, if you watch the part 1.
You can see that it has still the div 0 error message, if you wanna learn how to fix the div 0 error
message, please watch part 1. Here in part 2, we're gonna look at some strategies for fixing the null
error, the num error, and the hashtag error. Let's start first with null, the main reason why you will see
the null error is if you use a space in your formula when you actually should use a comma or some
other symbol. Let's do an example, let's say I would like to add up the total cost of the first 8 items in
this list and the last 5 or 6 items, I want to leave out some of the things here in the middle like
shipping envelopes. I don't want to include those, to do this, I'm going to go here off to the right. Let's
say g4, it doesn't have to be there though and I'll type equals so this cell equals the some of what, well
I will put in a left parentheses and then I'm gonna click and drag I could type the cell references here,
but I'll just click and drag to het the first eight or so items in this lost. Okay, so want to add that but I
also want it to add. Let's say erasers on down so let's say here in the formula, I put a dpace and then I
go down to erasers and I click and drag and get the remaining items, so back up here on my formula
you can see what it looks I'll tap enter or return on the keyboard but it gives me a null error. Now the
reason for that is because of this space here, I should not have put a space there. Whenever you put a
space in that situation or similar situations, what it does is it tru to identify an inner section of two
ranges, it's looking for where two ranges intersect. Well, guess what this range that I selected does not
intersect with this range. There is no intersection, and that's why it produces an error message. No
there is no intersection between those two ranges so instead of a space what I really meant to do and
should have done was put a comma. Now, if I tap enter on the keyboard, it's adding up this range and
it's adding up that range and putting them together and it gives me, 17:57. If you see this null error
double check your formula make sure you are using the proper symbols and don't have extra spaces.
Many times that will solve the error.

Next let's look at the num error and for this one, I'm gonna switch to the health tracker spreadsheet in
my workbook. And as you can see, this health tracker is a way to track the health of Jason Smith he's
trying to lose weight and you can see here his weight and the change from the previous week and
that's being tracked with a formula you can see the formula there. It's pretty easy, pretty simple who
knows why. But let's just say that I've got to know the square root of how many pounds Jason lost
form week to week. Well, I could do that, I could type in equals sqrt notice it says returns the square
root of a number. What's the number it's right here so I click there, and then I'll put in the left
parentheses and I need to put in the number so I'll click here on the number zero in this case but it's
actually clicking not on the number cell reference c7 and then I'll tap enter on the keyboard and there
you've got the results square zero is zero.

Now I’m going to use The auto fill handle this a little green Square in the lower right corner of the
cell I’ll just click on that and called the clinic and then drag down the page and it copied that formula
down and it worked beautifully except for a couple of num errors. Now why I am getting this number
error. Basically you’ll see number errors when you have a formula that try to produce an invalid
number so if you tell Excel to do an impossible calculation it’s not going to be able to do It. It’s
impossible so it may give you this num error. So why is this impossible well I told EXCEL to give me
the square root of -4 and if you know how sQuare roots works they’re just no possible way to get the
square root of -4 because it’s a negative number. Anytime you see this number error double check
yourFormula double check your data and make sure that you’re not asking the impossible of EXCEL.
To fix that would be to simply change negative number To zero but in this case that would not reflect
reality and so instead you want to do an if error formula. =iferror(formulathat was using before and
then),” so basically that will print on the screen a blank space and then I put the right parenthesis and
tap enter on the keyboard. Now if I copy the formula down what does if there is a nu, error it wipes it
out and pretend like there is not an error. If there are no errors then it performs the formula just as I
had created it up here with the square root.

There are other cases when you’ll see the num error it’s technically possible for the num error to
appear when a number is too big for EXCEL or too small. The biggest number that EXCEL can
display is a number one woth 308 zeros after it and if you try to go higher than that it’s going to
produce a num error. Also negative it also produced num errors.

Third error message that were gonna look at in this video it’s pretty simple pretty easy and very
common. And I’m going to use third spreadsheet. I’m going to the bottom underneath them and I
would like to get A grand total so I’ll just go up here and use this autosum button here on the home
tab home ribbon in the editing group I can just click that and it will auto sum everything in that
column. I tap Enter on the keyboard but look i get this terrible ugly looking hashtags error. I will the
reason for this is thE symbol means is simply that eXCEL cannot fit the contents of the cell in the
space provided. That’s solution for this is click and drag to provide more space for that column and
that way the contents of all of these cells show up and can fit in the sapace provided there is an even
easier way to do this all you have to do is double click on line between row and row and automatically
resize the column to the perfect width so that everything can be displayed.

3 ERRORS

NULL

NUM

9.3 FIXING COMMON EXCEL ERRORS

He is fixing common excel errors part three this is the third video in a three part series on how to fix
common excel errors in this particular video we’re going to focus on two different common errors one
is the ref error and the other is the value error you can see the spreadsheet we’re going to use this is an
inventory with a list of supplies where they’re stored and some other details about like the number of
packages the quantity per package and then we have a formula to calculate OK if there are 20
packages of batteries and six batteries per package we have 120 total batteries and like I say that’s
calculated automatically with this formula now to illustrate the ref error let’s say that I decided that
you know what this data here is really not necessary I don’t need to know the quantity per package I
just need to know the total quantity So what if I just go in and delete columns CMD I just clicked and
dragged from C to D it selected the entire columns and I’ll just deleted you can see what happened I
got a ref error and the reason for the ref error is the formula referred to cells that no longer exist in this
formula those cells are completely gone I deleted the entire columns those cells are gone I’m gonna
click away and undo that was control Z to bring it back and you can see that solves the problem now
what if I just delete one cell I right click on the cell I click delete excel is going to shift cells around to
try to replace the cell I’m destroying and you can see what it did it ruined the formula here it can’t
find the cell that it was referring to it’s gone and so it gives us a ref error for reference basically so
how do you fix that well you can either undo you can realize that was a mistake I can’t just delete data
or if you really have to delete the data that’s OK but just going to your formula by clicking on the cell
with the ref error and you can double click on it and make the changes right there in the cell or you
can just click once and then go up here to the formula bar whichever way you wanna do it you need to
go in and fix the formula so this is where the error is I can just delete that and say OK C3 multiplied
by D3 tap enter that fixed the reference now the references are valid now let’s move on to the value
error and you’ll get the value error, you’ll get the value error when you use the wrong function
argument or often what it is you’re trying to combine different types of data that really don’t go
together so like a number plus a text or maybe you’re multiplying a word by a number that will make
sense in most cases so let’s look at our first example of mistakes that might lead to value error let’s
say over here on the right I’m trying to multiply the number of packages by the quantity per package
like I did here successfully but let’s say instead of C2 what if I were to put B2 so now I’m multiplying
the third floor closet by 6 let’s see how that goes I tap enter and I get the value error why because I’m
combining two types of data that just don’t go together text multiplied by a number value another
example that’s kind of common is let’s say as I’m typing in the number 11 but if I’m in a hurry and I
accidentally put a space in there it still looks pretty good it looks like 11 to me but I tap enter on the
keyboard and I get a value error that extra space just doesn’t compute as a number another example
down here let’s say again I’m in a hurry and as I’m typing in the number 30 maybe I accidentally type
in 3 Oh instead of 3-0 let’s say all caps is on and that looks like 30 but I tap enter again I’m
combining things that just don’t go together 3 0 multiplied by four that is make any sense so I get a
value error another fairly common mistake that will lead to the value error is sometimes when you put
symbols in a cell with numbers excel doesn’t like that sometimes and you’ll get a value error now
what happens if I put a dollar sign in there normally you wouldn’t do that you wouldn’t just put a
dollar sign in instead you would select the cell and go up here on the home ribbon in the number
group and click on dollar sign that’s the proper way to show that these are dollars but from time to
time people will just go ahead and type a dollar sign that actually works it doesn’t cause an error but
other symbols often do cause errors for example let’s say I put a hashtag in there so hashtag 28 maybe
I’m trying to say number 28 but I tap enter on the keyboard and I get a value error so watch out
whenever you’re putting in symbols like these and you’re putting numbers also in the same cell that
will often lead to a value error so when you get these value errors take notice of what is in the cells
and if there’s mistakes you need to fix them obviously I can go in and change it from B2 to C2 that
will fix that one in this case I can fix the O and change it to zero and in this case I can get rid of the
symbols now some of you may be noticing that my formulas are all messed up a little bit that’s
because of the previous example of the ref error and how I deleted a cell notice that it moved
everything up and that’s why my formulas are a little bit off but the point remains that if you try to
combine different types of data together in formulas if they don’t go together you will probably get
the value error

10. HOW TO IMPORT TEXT FILE INTO EXCEL

In this video we want to see how to import a text file into excel

Often we get data that has the extension dot txt that means this is a text file of we open it and look at it
field names are in the first row records and subsequent rows and the delimiter which just means what
separates the bits of data the delimiter for us is a tab if our goal is to import the text data into our excel
worksheet and were using excel 2013 or earlier we go to get external data from text we select our file
and click import this is the classic text import wizard it knows we have a delimiter be sure and check
my data has headers we click next it knows that we have a tab this is the classic text import wizard it
knows we have a tab delimiter down below we can see the different columns and how the data has
been separated next when we select the column data format general it will interpret dates numbers and
text correctly click finish then click OK and our data is imported into our Excel worksheet if we’re in
Excel 2016 or later we go to the get and transform data grouping the data ribbon tab which is power
query then we go from text CSV refined or file and click import it wants to know what the delimiter is
it gets right we come down to low low 2 it’s going to load as an excel table which of course has
dynamic ranges existing click OK now over here in queries and connections we can see that 5000
rows have been loaded using power query over here in connections we can see this file was loaded
using the text import wizard if either one of these text file changes you can right click down to refresh
over here even though it doesn’t look like it’s connected anywhere we can right click refresh now as a
text file bonus if we don’t have tab as a delimiter about a comma then when we click from text we see
something like this click import and there it is picked up that this is a comma load-click OK bonus
number 2 what if you have a modern version of excel and you don’t want to import it as a table you
want to use the legacy 3-step wizard to just dump it as some data but guess what under get data
there’s the legacy Wizards and the way you add this option is under file options data and look at that I
happen to really like the web legacy version you can check whichever ones you’d like alright that was
a little fun with importing text files into excel if you want to learn more about loading data with power
query check out this video if you want to see the legacy method check out this