Darran Thayaparan

This function turns Excel in to a database management system. There are plenty of databases out there such as Access, SQL Server, MySQL, Oracle etc, but the power Excel user always finds a way to turn Excel in to a functioning Database.

Excel has its limitations when it comes to storing large amounts of data. I would recommend anyone to consider deploying one of the above mentioned databases if they have large amounts of data. The inability of Excel to separate the storage of information from the presentation of it is its key drawback.

Having said that, I want to move on to show you how cool the VLOOKUP() function is. (more…)

Doesn’t it make you nuts when you receive a list of names is Excel and all of them are in caps?  Or better yet, the person who gave you the data decided to mix and match them with alternating cases. (more…)

When I download bank statements from our bank’s trusty website in to Excel, they don’t appear to be quite user friendly. Well you can read the information and deduce what the transactions are, but analyzing that information presents some challenges.

Have a look at the following superficial bank transactions. They closely resemble what we get from our bank accounts at the office. The cheque numbers are conveniently lumped together with a bunch of zeroes that the bank thought was a good idea. (more…)