Excel. Chances are, that word alone inspires visions of lengthy spreadsheets, complicated macros, and the occasional pivot table or bar graph.

Opening a spreadsheet When you first open Excel (by double-clicking the icon or selecting it from the Start menu), the application will ask what you want to do. If you want to open a new spreadsheet, click Blank workbook. Excel can do it for you—with just one easy keyboard shortcut. Here it is: Ctrl +; Put your cursor in the cell where you want the date to appear, use that shortcut, and Excel will automatically fill in today’s date for you. IMPORTANT NOTE: Dates entered using that function are static, meaning they won’t change as your.

It’s true—with more than one billion Microsoft Office users globally, Excel has become the professional standard in offices across the globe for pretty much anything that requires management of large amounts of data.

1. Excel can help you do simple arithmetic like adding, subtracting, multiplying, or dividing any of your data. To add, use the + sign. To subtract, use the - sign. To multiply, use the. sign.
2. Open an existing Excel document. If you want to open an existing Excel document at any time, simply double-click the document in question. This will bring up the document in an Excel window. Skip this step if you want to open a new document in Excel.

But, if you think Excel is only good for making you cross-eyed while looking at a bunch of numbers and financial reports, think again. As Tomasz Tunguz points out, there are tons of uses of Excel in business (and beyond) outside of simple spreadsheets. In fact, the potential uses are seemingly endless.

There’s no way for us to compile a list that captures every one of Excel’s possible applications (even if you were up for reading a War and Peace-sized listicle).

However, in an effort to demonstrate the power and flexibility of everybody’s favorite spreadsheet tool, we’ve pulled together different ways that you could use Excel—both professionally, personally, and just for the fun of it.

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All about numbers

Of course, the core purpose of Excel all boils down to numbers. If you need to sort, retrieve, and analyze a large (or even small!) amount of data, Excel makes it a breeze.

Here are a few broad categories to keep in mind when it comes to implementing Excel for anything numbers-related.

1. Calculating

Find yourself running the same calculations over and over again? Build yourself a totally customized calculator in Excel by programming your commonly-used formulas. That way, you just need to punch in your digits and Excel will spit the answer out for you—no elbow grease required.

2. Accounting

Budget plans, forecasts, expense tracking, financial reports, loan calculators, and more. Excel was pretty much designed to meet these different accounting needs. And, considering that 89 percent of companies utilize Excel for its various accounting functions, it obviously fits the bill.

Excel even has numerous different spreadsheet templates to make all of those processes that much easier.

3. Charting

Pie charts, scatter charts, line charts, bar charts, area charts, column charts—the list goes on and on. If you need to find a way to represent data in a more visual and digestible way, Excel’s ability to transform rows and columns of digits into beautiful charts is sure to become one of your favorite things about it.

Want more information about the types of charts you can create in Excel? This article is a helpful resource.

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4. Inventory tracking

Tracking inventory can be a headache. Fortunately, Excel can help to keep employees, business owners, or even individuals organized and on top of their inventory—before any major problems crop up.

Making a plan

Let’s move on from the numbers—there are plenty of things that Excel can help you plan and organize that don’t necessarily involve endless rows of digits.

5. Calendars and schedules

Need to map out a content calendar for your blog or website? Lesson plans for your classroom? A PTO schedule for you and all of your co-workers? A daily schedule for you or your family? When it comes to various calendars, Excel can be surprisingly robust.

6. Seating charts

From a large corporate luncheon to a wedding, arranging a seating chart can be a royal headache. Fortunately, Excel can make it a total breeze. If you’re a real whiz, you’ll be able to automatically create your seating chart using your spreadsheet of RSVPs. Need help getting this done? This article provides a detailed walkthrough of how you can create a seating chart in Excel.

7. Goal planning worksheet

From professional goals to fitness goals to financial goals, it helps to have something to keep you focused and on track. Enter the beauty of Excel. Using the tool, you can create various worksheets, logs, and planning documents to help you monitor your progress—and, hopefully, cross the finish line.

8. Mock-ups

Excel might not be the first platform you think of when it comes to design. But, believe it or not, you can use the tool to put together various mock-ups and prototypes. In fact, it’s a surprisingly popular choice for creating website wireframes and dashboards.

Getting stuff done

Want to kick your productivity into high gear? Well, Excel can swoop in and save the day with a variety of uses that can help you tackle your tasks and to-dos with ease and organization.

9. Task list

Say goodbye to your standard pen and paper to-do list. With Excel, you can make a far more robust task list—and even track your progress on those larger to-dos that are currently on your plate.

10. Checklist

Similarly, you can create a simple checklist that allows you to tick off the things you’ve purchased or accomplished—from a grocery list to a roster of to-dos for an upcoming marketing campaign.

11. Project management charts

We’ve already touched on the fact that Excel is a total beast when it comes to creating charts. And, this concept holds true when it comes to various charts for project management.

From waterfall charts to manage your team’s progress to kanban style boards (just like Trello!) to keep things organized, there are tons of ways that Excel can help keep your project on track.

12. Time logs

You know that tracking time can be a huge asset to you and your productivity. While there are plenty of fancy apps and tools to help meet that need, you can think of Excel as the original tool for logging your time. And, it still serves as a suitable option today.

Involving other people

Need to collect information from other people? Survey tools and forms are one option. But, rest assured, you can also create your own in Excel.

13. Forms

From simple to complicated, Excel is a great option for creating forms. You can even program various drop-down menus so that users can select their choice from a pre-set list.

14. Quizzes

Trying to test somebody else’s—or even your own—knowledge of a subject? In Excel, you can create a bank of questions and answers in one worksheet, and then instruct Excel to quiz you in another.

Staying in touch

Managing relationships is crucial to your success both professionally and personally. Fortunately, Excel makes it easy to keep in touch.

15. CRM

Need a lightweight CRM to stay top of mind for your customers? You can make one in Excel. And, the best part? Building your own means it will be totally customizable. Sales Hacker also put together a nifty set of free sales excel templates you can use to help get started!

16. Mailing list

Data doesn’t just have to involve numbers. Excel is also great at managing and sorting large amounts of names and addresses—making it the perfect solution for your invite list for that company holiday party or the mailing list for that large promotion or campaign.

Using Excel, you can also mail merge—which makes it that much easier to print address labels and other necessary materials.

You can also apply a similar concept to create things like directories, RSVP lists, and other rosters that involve a large amount of information about people.

Just for fun

Excel doesn’t need to be all work and no play. There are plenty of other fun things you can create using the spreadsheet tool.

17. Historical logs

Whether you want to keep track of the various craft beers you’ve tasted, the workouts you’ve completed, or something else entirely, you can think of Excel as your go-to resource for keeping those things sorted and logged.

18. Sudoku puzzles

Love Sudoku puzzles? As it turns out, you can make your own in Excel. Or, if you find yourself stuck on a particularly challenging one, you can enlist the help of Excel to help you get it figured out!

Need help creating the Sudoku solver and generator? This post will get you well on your way!

19. Word cloud

Word clouds might not be the most scientific representations of data. But, they’re a fun (not to mention beautiful way) to gain an understanding of what words are being utilized most. You guessed it—you can create one using Excel. Here’s how to use information from Excel to create a word cloud in Wordle.

20. Art and animations

The capabilities of Excel likely extend far beyond what you’d initially anticipate. In fact, many people have used the tool to create some downright awesome art—from pixelated portraits to animations.

21. Trip planner

Have a vacation coming up? Make sure you have everything covered by creating yourself a helpful itinerary before you pack your bags and head out. Excel even has a handy trip planner template you can use to make sure you don’t miss anything (from your budget to airline information!).

Over to you

This might seem like a lengthy list. But, rest assured, it barely scratches the surface of all of the different things—aside from simple spreadsheets—that Excel is capable of. From lists to charts to design mock-ups, the different uses of Excel are seemingly limitless.

Feeling intimidated? Don’t worry - you can learn Excel online, all at your own pace, and become a spreadsheet ninja in no time.

Do you have something cool you like to create using Excel? Let us know in the comments!

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In Excel, the CONCATENATE function allows you to combine text from different cells into one cell. In this tutorial, we’ll show you, step by step, how to use the CONCATENATE function.

When you’re analyzing data with numbers in Excel, it’s easy enough to combine or manipulate it through multiplication or addition. Manipulating text in Excel can be a little harder to achieve, however. So for cells that contain text, you’ll need to try something different.

That’s where the CONCATENATE function comes in. Svantek others driver download. In this guide, we’ll cover:

So: How does the CONCATENATE function work? Let’s take a look.

1. What is the CONCATENATE function and what is it used for?

If you want to combine data from two or more cells together, the best way to do it is to use the CONCATENATE function. This lets you combine multiple cells together, whether they contain numbers or text, without affecting the original cells. There are several reasons why you may wish to do this.

If you have a list of addresses, for instance, you could use CONCATENATE to combine each section of the address (the name, the first line, the town, etc) into a single cell. This could then be copied or used elsewhere.

Using CONCATENATE or CONCAT in Excel

From Excel 2016 onwards, CONCATENATE has been “replaced” with the CONCAT function. That means that, if you’re using a later version of Excel, you can use either CONCATENATE or CONCAT. Older versions of Excel will need to stick to CONCATENATE, however. Spx usb devices driver download for windows 10.

CONCAT works exactly the same way as CONCATENATE, so any references to CONCATENATE below will work exactly the same for CONCAT. Both are interchangeable, and while CONCATENATE remains in place for compatibility reasons, it could be removed in future Office releases.

There aren’t any additional benefits to using CONCAT over CONCATENATE, so feel free to use either function. If CONCATENATE is removed, however, then you’ll need to switch to using CONCAT instead.

2. How does the CONCATENATE function work in Microsoft Excel?

The word concatenate is a technical term, but it simply means linking things together. That’s exactly what CONCATENATE and CONCAT do in Excel, combining the contents of different cells and displaying them in a new cell.

While you could copy and paste the contents of each cell into a single cell yourself, or use Excel’s cell merge feature to do it automatically, using CONCATENATE or CONCAT means that your original data is left untouched.

Most data analysts would prefer to leave source data intact, manipulating it instead by using pivot tables or other Excel functions. The advantage of CONCATENATE or CONCAT is that you don’t need to alter the source data at all, but instead refer to it. If the original data is modified, this will update the data displayed in the combined cell.

CONCATENATE also allows you to combine different types of data, such as numbers, dates, and text strings, which wouldn’t typically be possible without it.

3. Things to consider before using CONCATENATE in Excel

While the CONCATENATE and CONCAT functions allow you to easily combine data from other sources, there are some limitations that you’ll need to be aware of.

These include, in no particular order:

• You can use a maximum of 255 strings or 8192 characters in a CONCATENATE or CONCAT formula.
• The formula must have at least one string for it to work.
• If you want to use a range of cells, you can’t use an array (such as A1:A10). Each cell used in a CONCATENATE or CONCAT formula will have to be referenced manually (eg. A1, A2, A3, A4, etc.)
• If you want to combine your data with special characters in a CONCATENATE or CONCAT formula, such as &, then you’ll need to wrap them in quotation marks (” & “), otherwise Excel will attempt to treat them as part of the syntax of the formula itself.
• If any cell references are wrong, or if an illegal character is used, Excel will return the #VALUE! error message.
• CONCATENATE and CONCAT will always return a text string, even if the data you’re using is a number or is a cell with the number cell type. This can impact how it can be used by other functions.
• Because CONCATENATE and CONCAT can only handle text strings, you can use it with other functions (such as TEXT and TODAY) to correctly handle other data types, such as date numbers.
• You can use the ampersand (&) for basic concatenation without using either CONCATENATE or CONCAT functions (eg. =A1&A2&A3).

4. How to use CONCATENATE in an Excel formula: A step-by-step tutorial

To use the CONCATENATE function in an Excel spreadsheet, here’s what you’ll need to do.

Step 1: Select an empty cell

Start by opening your Excel spreadsheet and selecting an empty cell. Once you’ve selected the cell, click on the formula bar at the top to begin typing in your new CONCAT or CONCATENATE formula.

Download wilocity driver. Once the formula bar is active, you can begin to type in your formula.

Step 2: Create your CONCATENATE or CONCAT formula

Both CONCATENATE and CONCAT have a very simple syntax that you’ll need to follow. For example:

=CONCATENATE(text1, text 2, …)

=CONCAT(text1, text2, …)

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The reference to text (eg. text1, text2) in the example syntax above refers to a text string that can be input manually, or to a cell reference containing the data you wish to use. As we’ve mentioned, there’s a hard limit of 255 strings that you can use here.

With your empty cell selected, begin to type your CONCATENATE or CONCAT formula by typing =CONCATENATE( or =CONCAT( in the formula bar.

You’ll then need to begin to select your data.

Step 3: Select your data

Both CONCATENATE and CONCAT can combine text strings from other cells (using cell references to identify them) or by using text strings within the formula itself. Each parameter (text 1, text2, etc) is then combined.

These follow the first open parentheses in sequence. For instance, =CONCATENATE(A1,A2,A3,A4) will merge the data from cells A1, A2, A3, and A4 together. Type this into the formula bar to create your formula, closing with a close parentheses, then hit the enter key to display the formula output.

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You could also use the following CONCATENATE or CONCAT examples where cell references or text strings are used together:

=CONCATENATE(A1, B1, C1)

=CONCATENATE(“This is a text string”, “ which will be combined together”, “ to make a long sentence”)

=CONCAT(A1, B1, C1, “ which is very long”)

As the examples above show, any text strings that you add manually will need to be wrapped in quotation marks. This is to ensure that the contents of a text string in your formula aren’t considered to be arguments in the formula itself.

Because CONCATENATE and CONCAT combine numbers, text, and other types of data together, the only way to do this is to treat the output as a text string. This means that, even if the values are numbers, the formula output will be considered as text, and you won’t be able to manipulate the number type.

5. How to use CONCATENATE with special characters

Adding certain special characters to a CONCATENATE or CONCAT formula, such as ampersands and hyphens, can break it. To avoid this, you’ll need to make sure that special characters are wrapped in quotation marks.

To do this, open your Excel spreadsheet, select an empty cell, and use the formula bar to type a CONCATENATE or CONCAT formula similar to the following examples, replacing the cell references or text strings with your own data:

=CONCATENATE(A1, “ & “, A2)

=CONCAT(“This is a text string”, “ & “, “it is long”)

You may want to do this to make the output from a CONCATENATE or CONCAT formula easier to follow. You’ll also want to do this to avoid words from text strings merging together, such as “This is a text string&it is too long”, rather than “This is a text string & it is too long”.

6. How to use CONCATENATE with date number formats

When you use CONCATENATE or CONCAT in Excel, the output is displayed as a text string. This can sometimes malform numbers with different number types, such as dates. To avoid this, you can use the TEXT function to ensure that the date number is converted by CONCATENATE or CONCAT and displayed correctly.

To do this, you could use the following formula, replacing the date values with your own:

=CONCATENATE(“The date today is “, TEXT(TODAY(), “dd/mm/yyyy”))

=CONCAT(“Jim’s birthday is on the “,TEXT(“10/11/2020”,”dd/mm/yy”))

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By using TEXT with CONCATENATE or CONCAT, you can ensure that the number will be displayed in the date format that you require.

7. How to handle line breaks using CONCATENATE

The CONCATENATE and CONCAT function, used in a formula, will output on a single line. This isn’t ideal for every scenario, especially if you’re trying to combine certain types of data, such as a postal address.

To get around this limitation, you can use CONCATENATE or CONCAT with the CHAR function, which will be able to output the ASCII code for a line break (10). To do this, you’ll need to use the following formula, replacing the cell references with your own:

=CONCATENATE(A1, CHAR(10), C1)

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=CONCAT(A1, CHAR(10), B1)

Previously, you’d need to use CHAR(13) if you were using Excel on Mac for this to work. However, in recently released versions of Excel on Mac, you’ll be able to use CHAR(10) like Windows users.

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This will also work for other types of special characters, such as slashes or ampersands, but most users will find it’s easier to wrap these types of characters in quotation marks instead.

Final thoughts

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The CONCATENATE function in Excel is considered an essential tool for data analysts to have in their arsenal, allowing you to quickly combine different types of data. It isn’t the only way you can do this, however, as the newer CONCAT function offers the same functionality in the latest versions of Excel. If you’re keen to continue exploring, why not check out the XLOOKUP function next, or the AVERAGE function? Alternatively, here’s a round-up of 10 Excel formulas that every data analyst should know.

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If you’re new to data analytics, you can try a free introductory data analytics short course. And, for more tutorials and resources, check out the following: