Jason Howie

This section illustrates the powerful features Excel has to offer to analyze data. Learn all about conditional formatting charts pivot tables and much more.

Use the SEARCH function in Excel to find the position of a substring in a string. The SEARCH function is case-insensitive and supports wildcards.

Use the solver in Excel to find the assignment of persons to tasks that minimizes the total cost.

A row or column of numbers in Excel that are plotted in a chart is called a data series. You can plot one or more data series in a chart.

Below we will look at a program in Excel VBA that creates a User Defined Function. Excel has a large collection of functions. In most situations those functions are sufficient to get the job done. If not you can create your own function called User Defined Function or custom Excel function. You can access a User Defined Function just like any other Excel function.

This example teaches you how to calculate the moving average of a time series in Excel. A moving average is used to smooth out irregularities (peaks and valleys) to easily recognize trends.

The Range object which is the representation of a cell (or cells) on your worksheet is the most important object of Excel VBA. This chapter gives an overview of the properties and methods of the Range object.

The mother of all objects is Excel itself. We call it the Application object. The application object gives access to a lot of Excel related options.

In most cases you can use the minus and plus symbols in the status bar to quickly zoom the document. Use the buttons on the View tab to zoom to a specific percentage and to zoom to a selection.

To enter a date in Excel use the "/" or "-" characters. To enter a time use the ":" (colon). You can also enter a date and a time in one cell.