Excel 2003 Training for Business Analysts

Excel 2003

Learning to design spreadsheets and
manipulate data

© Tim Ward 2009 – all rights reserved

Introduction

• Excel 2003
• Needs to be interactive or will be “Death by
Powerpoint”
• Many levels of knowledge – no question is
stupid


Suggested Agenda
• Spreadsheet Design • Visual Basic
• Think before you build • Introduction
• Simple Functions • Recording Macros
• Named Ranges • Editing Macros
• Navigation • Custom Functions
• Toolbars
• Formatting
• Objects (Pictures etc)

• Data Handling
• Text Functions
• Lookup &Reference Functions
• If statements
• Nesting Formulae
• Error Handling
• Pivot Tables

Spreadsheet Design
“Think before you build”
• Questions you should be able to answer
• What is the purpose of my spreadsheet?
• Who is going to use it?
• What are the inputs?
• What are the outputs?
• Who is the audience for the output?


Spreadsheet Design
“Think before you build”
• Simple rules for good design
• Never change imported data
• Never link workbooks
• create an output sheet and copy it instead
• Always have a worksheet for constants
• Use named ranges
• Try to place input cells on a separate page
• Apply consistent formatting always
• Develop a team style and be anal about applying it


Spreadsheet Design
Simple functions
• Simplest Function
• =A1
• Refers to the value in cell A1
• When copied the reference will change
• Fixed references
• Use Named range
• Use “$” to fix row or column or both
• {F4} cycles between the options
• =$A$1 – both row and column fixed
• =$A1 – just column fixed
• =A$1 – just row fixed
• Try it now

Spreadsheet Design
Simple functions
• Other simple functions:
• =SUM()
• adds up a range
• =COUNT()
• counts the number of numbers in a range
• =COUNTA()
• counts the number of non blank cells in a range
• =SUMIF(lookup_range, criteria, sum_range)
• Adds up values in a range matching a criteria


Spreadsheet Design
Named Ranges
• Refers to a cell or cells
• Can be fixed or relative
• Makes formulae easier to read understand
• Insert a single name by:
• Insert > Name > Define
• Insert Multiple Names
• Insert > Name > Create

• Examples

Spreadsheet Design
Navigation & Shortcuts
• Using the Keyboard is much more efficient than
clicking with the mouse, but it is a personal choice…
• {Ctrl}+{Space} – select the whole column
• {Shift}+{Space} – select the whole row
• {Ctrl}+{Arrow Down} – move to last cell in current range in
the current column
• {Ctrl}+{End}- move to last cell in worksheet
• {Ctrl}+{Page Up} – move to worksheet next on right
• {Ctrl}+{Page Down} – move to worksheet next on left
• {Ctrl}+{Tab} – Cycle through open workbooks
• Right Click Button
• {Alt}+{Underlined Letters} – Use menu items with keyboard

Spreadsheet Design
Formatting
• How something is presented is at least as important
as what is being presented
• Formatting may be different for different media
• Decide on and use standard formats for:
• Font
• Borders & Shading
• Numbers
• Colour Schema
• Headings, Details, Totals etc
• Never Hide a column or row use Outline Symbols
instead
• Aim for professional but do not be too “bold”

Spreadsheet Design
Objects Pictures
• Almost any “object” can be embedded
• Pictures (JPEG, GIF, BMP etc)
• VISIO
• Other Excel ranges
• Excerpts from Word (and vica versa)
• Video
• Sounds
• IMPORTANT: Make sure the Aspect Ratio is
maintained
• Try it now…

Data Handling

• Very rare to input all data into a spreadsheet
• Important to be able to manipulate data and
represent it as required
• Pivot Tables
• Powerful for ad-hoc analysis
• Not great for standard reporting
• Many categories of function – covering today
• TEXT
• LOOKUP
• INFORMATION
• LOGICAL

TEXT Functions

• Broadly 2 categories
• Formatting
• Extracting and Searching
• Often used in combination with other
formulae
• First lets cover the most useful functions


TEXT Functions - Formatting

• Data extracted from systems has often been
inconsistently input with different cases and spacing.
• This looks unprofessional
• Can lead to incorrect lookup results
• 6 Functions
• =PROPER()
• =UPPER()
• =LOWER()
• =TEXT()
• =VALUE()
• =TRIM()



• Go to the TEXT - Formatting Worksheet
• Example text in cell A6
“thE qUicK bRown FOX JumPs Over tHe lAZy dog”
• Hard to read and looks scrappy
• Type =PROPER(A6) into Cell B6
• This capitalizes the first letter of each word and
makes all other letters lower case



• Type =UPPER(A6) into Cell B7
• This capitalizes all letters in the text

• Type =LOWER(A6) into Cell B7
• This changes all letters in the text to lower
case



• Excel has a “code” for number formats.
• dd-mmm-yyyy formats dates to read “16-Jun-2001”
• Or dd-mm-yy = 16-06-01
• #,##0 would format the number 1234 to 1,234
• #,##0.00 would format the number 1234 to 1,234.00
• 00000 would format the number 1234 to 01234
• Q00 C000 would format the number 1234 to Q01 C234
• Etc…

• This syntax can be used to define your
own custom formats
• Everyone happy?


• =TEXT(Cell,Format)
• Converts a number into text
• Format is per the previous slide
• Type =TEXT(A11,”#,##0.00“ in to cell B11
• =VALUE()
• Converts text into a number
• Type =VALUE(B11) into cell B12



• Finally the TRIM() function
• Text strings can have inconsistent spacing
• This makes it hard to manipulate the data
• It can make it hard to read
• TRIM() removes all spaces and replaces them
with a single space between each “word”


TEXT Functions
Extracting and Searching
• Selecting Part of a text string
• LEFT(), RIGHT() and MID()
• Useful when:
• Text has structure
• Want to display only part of the text
• Want to extract a number from a text string
• Often combined with lookup & other functions
• Searching within a text string
• FIND()


TEXT Functions
• =LEFT(Cell,NoChar)
• Returns a text string “NoChar” long starting from the far left
of the “Cell”
• Type =LEFT(A19,3) into cell B19
• This returns “thE”
• Now try typing =UPPER(LEFT(A19,3)) in cell B20 -
What do you think the result will be?


TEXT Functions
• =RIGHT(Cell,NoChar)
• Returns a text string “NoChar” long starting from the far right of
the “Cell”
• Type =RIGHT (A19,3) into cell B21
• This returns “dog”

• =MID(Cell,Start,NoChar)
• Returns a text string “NoChar” long starting “Start” letters into the
“Cell”
• Type =MID(A19,5,5) in cell B22
• This returns “qUicK”
• Try writing your own formula to convert this to read “Quick” in
cell B23


TEXT Functions
• Selecting Part of a text string
• LEFT(), RIGHT() and MID()

• =LEFT(Cell,NoChar)
• Returns a text string “NoChar” long starting from
the far left of the “Cell”
• Type =LEFT(A19,3) into cell B19
• This returns “thE”
• Now try typing =UPPER(LEFT(A19,3)) in cell
B20 - What do you think the result will be?

TEXT Functions
• Left, Right and Mid are useful but what if you don’t know:
• How long the text string should be
• Where the text string starts

• The “FIND” function becomes important
• =FIND(String,Cell,Start)
• String - the text you want to search for (case sensitive)
• Cell - The cell containing the text you want to search
• Start - Where in the cell to start searching


TEXT Functions
• Try typing =FIND(“o”,A19) in cell B24
• This gives the result 13
• i.e. the first LOWER case “o” in cell A19 is at position 13

• Try typing =FIND(“O”,A19) in cell B24
• This gives the result 18
• i.e. the first UPPER case “O” in cell A19 is at position 18


TEXT Functions
Exercise

Data has been extracted from a system which contains values which are
structured as follows: a variable length code followed by a container
number followed by the delivery point and the Vessel Name
The container number and delivery point need to be extracted into
Columns B and C as Headed

- Switch to the “TEXT - Exercise” Worksheet
- Using the LEFT, RIGHT, MID, and FIND functions
1. write a formulae to extract the container number
2. write a formulae to extract the Delivery Point


TEXT Functions
Exercise Review
• To extract the container number from column A we
would use the MID function.
• =MID(Cell,Start,NoChar)
• Cell is easy
• Container numbers are always the same length so we
know that NoChar is 11
• How do we work out where the container number
starts?


TEXT Functions
Exercise Review
• If we look at the data container number is always
proceeded by a space
• We can use the find function to work out which
position the space is in
• =FIND(“ “,Cell)
• And we know that the container number starts 1
character after the space
• So the formula would be
• =MID(Cell,FIND(“ “,Cell)+1,11)


TEXT Functions
Exercise Review
• For the Whiz Kids
• The elements of the formula are:
• Cell - as before
• Start - FIND(" ",A3,FIND(" ",A3,12)+1)+1
• The character after the second space

• NoChar - FIND(" ",A3,FIND(" ",A3,FIND("
",A3)+1)+1)-(FIND(" ",A3,FIND(" ",A3,12)+1))
• The number of characters between the third space and the second space

We can go through this later if anyone wants to :-)


Summary - TEXT Functions

• You have learnt how to:
• Change the case and data type of a cell with
LOWER, UPPER, PROPER, TEXT, VALUE and TRIM
functions
• Extract parts of a text string with LEFT, RIGHT
and MID functions
• Search for stings within a cell with the FIND
function
• Combine the FIND and MID functions to increase
their flexibility

Lookup & Reference Functions

• There are many of these functions. This
section will cover:
• VLOOKUP and HLOOKUP
• MATCH & INDEX
• ROW
• COLUMN
• OFFSET


Lookup & Reference Functions

• Lookup functions quite inefficient
• Character by character match
• Very slow
• Need error trapping
• Sorting important
• If lot of similar lookups or error trapping
• Use Match and Index instead of HVLOOKUP


Lookup and Reference Functions
VLOOKUP and HLOOKUP
• These lookup functions search for a value in the first
row or column of a range and return the value x
rows or columns away from the match.
• These functions have the same syntax but perform
their searches in different directions
• “V” = Vertical and this function works by searching down
columns
• “H” = Horizontal and this function works by searching across
rows


VLOOKUP
• Data must be arranged in columns
• =VLOOKUP(What,Where,Return,Match_Type)
• Where = the range containing the data
• The values for “What” must be in the first Column
• What = the value to be looked up in the first column
of “Where”
• Return = the column in the “Where” range that
contains the values to be returned
• Match_Type = the type of match required
• 0 = an exact match (not case sensitive), Returns “#N/A” if
no match is found
• 1 = the closest match that is less than or equal to the What
value (1st column of “Where” must be in ascending order)

HLOOKUP
• Data must be arranged in Rows
• =HLOOKUP(What,Where,Return,Match_Type)
• Where = the range containing the data
• The values for “What” must be in the first Row
• What = the value to be looked up in the first row of
“Where”
• Return = the row in the “Where” range that contains
the values to be returned
• 0 = an exact match (not case sensitive), Returns “#N/A” if
no match is found
• 1 = the closest match that is less than or equal to the What
value (1st column of “Where” must be in ascending order)


• =MATCH(What,Where,Match_Type)
• Use on single row or column
• Returns the number of the row or column where the match
is found
• What = the value to be looked up
• Where = the range to do the lookup in
• -1 - finds the smallest value that is greater than or equal to
“What”. “Where” must be placed in descending order
• 0 - finds the first value that is exactly equal to “What”. “Where”
can be in any order. Returns “#N/A” if no match is found
• 1 - finds the largest value that is less than or equal to “What”.
“Where” must be placed in ascending order


• =INDEX(RANGE,Row_No,Column_No)
• Returns the value at the intersection of the
Row_No and Column_No in the RANGE
• Like coordinates in Maths
• Much faster than lookup as no searching
• Combine with “Match” – error trapped
lookups, efficient multi column return
• Combine with SUM to allow formula to cope
with increasing periods etc


• =ROW()
• Returns the number of the row the cell is in
• =COLUMN()
• Returns the number of the column the cell is in
• Sometimes useful in calculations
• e.g. January is in column E (or 5), Feb in F etc.
• If you need to use the month in the formula in a column
then COLUMN()-4 gives this.



• =OFFSET(Reference,Row_Down,Column_Across)
• Returns the value in the cell x Row_Down and y
Column_Across from the Reference

• Useful alternative to index if selecting values
from a table where you need both rows and
columns to be variable


IF Statements

• If statements let a formula return different
values or perform different calculations
depending on the result of a logical test
• A logical test is any expression that can be
evaluated as TRUE or FALSE
• Black = White is a logical test and would return
FALSE
• Age >= 21 is a logical test which would return
true if the value for Age was greater than or equal
to 21

IF Statements

• =IF(Expr,Value_If_True,Value_If_False)

• Expr is the logical test
• Value_If_True is the result if Expr evaluates
to true
• Value_If_False is the result if Expr evaluates
to false


IF Statements

• Sometimes the result of an IF statement
depends on more than one Logical Test
• OR and AND Expressions can be used to add
this functionality to an IF statement

• AND(Expr1, Expr2, …, Expr30)
• If all of the Expr’s evaluate to TRUE then the
AND statement evaluates to TRUE otherwise
it evaluates to FALSE

IF Statements

• OR(Expr1, Expr2, …, Expr30)
• If ANY of the Expr’s evaluate to TRUE then
the OR statement evaluates to TRUE


Error Handling

• Errors make totalling difficult and look
unprofessional
• Need to trap errors
• Use if statement combined with:
• ISERROR
• ISNUMBER
• ISLOGICAL
• ISNA
• IS…

Error Handling

• All “IS…” functions have the same format
• Most common is “ISERROR”
• =ISERROR(EXPRESSION)
• Tests the value to see if it is an Excel error
• #N/A, #REF, #VALUE etc
• If it is an error then the formula evaluates to
TRUE
• If not an error then the formula evaluates to
FALSE


Pivot Tables

• Very powerful tool – revolutionised analysis
• Not great for standard reporting
• Can change size and shape
• Tricks for forcing standard size and shape
• Data sources
• External
• Worksheet
• Another Pivot Table
• Formatting

Visual Basic for Applications

• Language Structure
• Recording Macros
• Editing Macros
• Custom Functions



• Can be used for:
• Automating repetitive tasks
• Guiding users with messages and dialog boxes
• Restricting functionality
• Designing custom menus and toolbars
• Custom Functions
• Structure is the same between office
applications
• Objects may vary



• Language Structure
• VBA is an Object Orientated Language
• Almost everything in Excel is an Object
• Workbooks, Worksheets, Cells
• An object is a thing that you want to do something to
• Objects are grouped in collections
• Objects have PROPERTIES
• The font size, value in a cell etc
• You do things towith OBJECTS using a METHOD
• Copy, Paste, Delete
• The best way to start learning is to record a Macro

Visual Basic For Applications

• Look at the macro we just recorded
• Tools > Macro > Visual Basic Editor
• Make sure the project explorer is showing on the
left – if not click {Ctrl}+R or go to the View menu
• Look for VBA Project (My Name.xls)
• Click the + sign next to it to expand the container
• VBA Code is stored in a Module
• Click the + sign next to the Modules folder
• There should be a “Module 1”
• Double Click this module


• All macros start with the word sub followed
by the macro name followed by brackets
• The macro we recorded starts
Sub Macro1()
• All macros end with the words
End Sub()
• Lets look at the detail..



• Macro’s can be edited once you understand
their structure
• Reading our macro is there anything that is
superfluous?
• Other common edits
• add a loop
• Repeats the same action for a number of Worksheets or
Ranges etc
• Do WhileUntil… Loop
• For…Next
• For Each xxx in xxx … Next xxx


• Other common edits
• add a loop
• Repeats the same action for a number of Worksheets or
Ranges etc
• Do WhileUntil… Loop
• For…Next
• For Each xxx in xxx … Next xxx
• with xxxx
• Allows many properties to be set for the same object
• If ... Then … Else … End if


Thanks for your time

• Anything I’ve not covered?
• Anything unclear?
• Suggestions for improvement?


Further Training and Info

• Microsoft’s site full of useful courses for free
• http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/training/CR0618311410
• TechNet useful for more technical help
• http://technet.microsoft.com/en-gb/office/default.aspx


Excel 2003 Training for Business Analysts

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