Big Book of Key Performance Indicators January 10, 2019

I have received a bunch of email the last few days from folks who have been directed to my Big Book of Key Performance Indicators and the companion spreadsheet.  Since ...... Continue »

The Power of Combining Number Formatting and Conditional Formatting in Excel September 25, 2015

I build a lot of dashboards in Excel, and I’m a bit of a stickler when it comes to data visualization. This post walks through some of the ways that ...... Continue »

Working with Variable-Row-Count Adobe Report Builder Queries September 13, 2015

I use Adobe Report Builder a lot. It’s getting to the point where I have to periodically reassure my wife that my relationship with the tool is purely platonic. One of the ...... Continue »

Using Excel to Count Text Occurrences January 19, 2015

[UPDATE 1/19/2015: A couple of comments have pointed out that COUNTIF would address this scenario in a single formula. That’s a great point…and one that had not occurred to me. ...... Continue »

Excel Dropdowns Done Right November 5, 2014

Do you used in-cell dropdowns in your spreadsheets? I used them all the time. It’s both an ease-of-use and a data quality maneuver: clicking a dropdown is faster than typing ...... Continue »

10 Tips for Building a Dashboard in Excel October 19, 2014

This post has an unintentionally link bait-y post title, I realize. But, I did a quick thought experiment a few weeks ago after walking a client through the structure of ...... Continue »

Exploring Optimal Post Timing…Redux October 4, 2014

Back in 2012, I developed an Excel worksheet that would take post-level data exported from Facebook Insights and do a little pivot tabling on it to generate some simple heat ...... Continue »

Automating the Cleanup of Facebook Insights Exports June 17, 2014

This post (the download, really — it’s not much of a post) is about dealing with exports from Facebook Insights. If that’s not something you do, skip it. Go back ...... Continue »

10 Things You Should ALWAYS Do (or Not Do) in Excel February 16, 2014

It was a fairly innocuous vent-via-Twitter tweet last week that inspired this post: I was surprised by the Twitter conversation it started, with several people noting that they had no idea ...... Continue »

Excel: Charting Averages without Adding Columns November 23, 2013

I was recently building out a pretty involved dashboard where, ultimately, I had about 50 different metrics that were available through various drilldowns in Excel. Beyond just the number of ...... Continue »