Tips for Cleaning Data in Excel

Want to get ahead of 99% of Microsoft Excel users? Learn Power Query. It gives you 4 data superpowers that most professionals don’t even know exist: 1) Clean and combine messy data without formulas If you’ve ever wrestled with: Blank columns Extra header rows Split data across tabs “Total” rows that break your calculations Power Query fixes all of that fast. No IFERROR(), TRIM(), or manual cleanup. You can use Power Query to: Remove blank rows Change data formats Rename and reorder columns Combine multiple sheets or files Power Query was designed to clean the messy spreadsheets you've seen countless times. 2) Automate your data cleaning once and reuse it forever The real magic of Power Query? You clean your data once. Then next month, when you get a new file… you click Refresh. That’s it. The cleaning steps run automatically. The same way every single time. No more: Copy-pasting from new CSVs Rebuilding formulas for every update “Ugh, this new file broke the whole thing again” Power Query makes your work repeatable, reliable, and fast. But here's the best part. You don’t need to know code. Just click through the Power Query interface. Excel builds the logic for you. And if you do want to go deeper? You can edit the M code it generates, too. 3) Sourcing data. Power Query can be used for much more than cleaning data inside a workbook. It's designed to connect to external data sources like databases and web services. Power Query opens new worlds of data for you to use to make more impact at work. And here's the best way to use all that data. 4) Feed data to Python in Excel. Microsoft has included Python in Excel as part of Microsoft 365 subscriptions. Their intent is crystal clear. Microsoft is making Excel the tool of choice for DIY data science. Power Query is the best way to feed tasty data to Python in Excel. It's a game-changer.

Power Query: My Secret Weapon for Excel Automation 🚀 Remember those late nights updating monthly reports? Export data. Clean data. Format cells. Build charts. Copy to slides. Then do it all again next month... I finally said ENOUGH and learned Power Query. This changed EVERYTHING about how I work with data. 🎬 Just uploaded a video showing 13 amazing things you can do with Power Query!  https://lnkd.in/dn2avtp4 ➡️ WHY I LOVE POWER QUERY Power Query completely changed my relationship with Excel. I used to spend hours every month manually cleaning data exports, removing columns, filtering rows, and getting everything ready for my dashboards. You create your data transformation process ONCE, then simply refresh when new data arrives. That's it. All those manual steps? Gone. My monthly reporting went from taking days to literally minutes. ➡️ MY DATA WORKFLOW I always structure my Excel files with these three components: - SOURCE data (raw exports from accounting software) - TRANSFORM layer (where Power Query works its magic) - OUTPUT dashboards (what stakeholders actually see) This separation means my source data stays untouched. I can make any transformation in Power Query without affecting the original export. ➡️ FOLDER MAGIC Want to see jaws drop in your next team meeting? Show them this trick. Point Power Query at a folder with 24 months of GL exports. One click pulls everything in, formatted exactly how you want. Every transaction from every month combined automatically. February arrives? Drop the new file in your folder, hit refresh. Done. No copying, no pasting, no manual work at all. ➡️ RELATIONSHIPS WITHOUT VLOOKUP Power Query lets you merge tables together effortlessly. This works similar to VLOOKUP but without the formula complexity. I connect expense data with department owners, cost centers with budgets, and transaction details with categories. For example, I have a table showing which department head is responsible for each cost center. Power Query automatically pulls in the right name for each transaction. ➡️ P&L TRANSFORMATION Standard P&L exports make terrible pivot tables without some work. They come with your accounts as rows and months as columns. Great for viewing, terrible for analysis. Power Query's "unpivot" feature turns your wide P&L into a format perfect for analysis. Each row becomes a specific account for a specific month with a specific amount. Now you can pivot on anything! === Want to see all these Power Query techniques in action? Check out my new video where I walk through everything step by step What Excel task still eats up your time every month? Share below and let's see if Power Query can solve it 👇

You have a giant dataset. You have tens of thousands of duplicate values. To get a listing of only the unique values would take you forever. Or would it? Imagine you're performing data analysis on sales figures for the past year. Dealing with redundant data types can be time-consuming, confusing, and a mess. It might also lead to inaccurate information. 𝐓𝐡𝐢𝐬 𝐢𝐬 𝐰𝐡𝐞𝐫𝐞 𝐄𝐱𝐜𝐞𝐥'𝐬 𝐔𝐍𝐈𝐐𝐔𝐄 𝐟𝐮𝐧𝐜𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 𝐜𝐨𝐦𝐞𝐬 𝐢𝐧. The UNIQUE function in Excel extracts unique values from a list or data range. If prompted correctly, it effectively filters out repeated instances of the same data type or point, returning a dynamic list of only distinct entries. Whenever new data is added, the function automatically keeps each unique instance, discards duplicates, and provides a cleaner, more accurate data set. 𝐖𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐝𝐨𝐞𝐬 𝐔𝐍𝐈𝐐𝐔𝐄 𝐫𝐞𝐩𝐥𝐚𝐜𝐞? I used to either use either pivot tables or manually 'remove duplicates' within Excel's Data tab. It was extremely manual, messy, and usually required multiple tries to get it right. The syntax for the UNIQUE function is straightforward: =𝘜𝘕𝘐𝘘𝘜𝘌(𝘢𝘳𝘳𝘢𝘺, [𝘣𝘺_𝘤𝘰𝘭], [𝘦𝘹𝘢𝘤𝘵𝘭𝘺_𝘰𝘯𝘤𝘦]) 'Array' is the range or array from which a filter of unique values is run. 'By_col' is an optional logical value (TRUE/FALSE) that defines whether duplicates should be removed, based upon a selection of columns or rows. The 'exactly_once' is also optional. When set to TRUE, the function will return values that occur a single time. If it is FALSE or omitted altogether, it will return all values that are unique. UNIQUE is one of the dynamic array functions that appeared just a few years ago. By replacing older, more cumbersome approaches of removing duplicates, UNIQUE simplifies data scrubbing and data management. Do you use UNIQUE? What do you use it for? #seidmanfinancial #Excel