Tips and Tutorials

Data Tables in Excel tutorial

In my last Excel Tutorial, I covered using SUMIFS and SUMPRODUCT.

Data Tables is also an advanced topic in Microsoft Excel that falls under the category of What-If Analysis. What-If or Sensitivity Analysis is carried out to study the variation of the output to changes in the input variable.

Consider a case of compound interest, where you invest a certain amount of money in a bank deposit and the amount is compounded every year.

Formula for calculating compound interest:

A = P * (1 + r/n) ^ nt

Where:

  • P = principal amount (initial investment)
  • r = annual interest rate (as a decimal)
  • n = number of times the interest is compounded per year
  • t = number of years
  • A = amount after time t

Now, if suppose we want to see what the final amount will be at different interests rates, we can quickly use a data table for the same.

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Excel Tutorial: SUMIF with Multiple Conditions

The title of the post is a bit of a misnomer because the SUMIF function in Excel does not allow you to have more than condition.

Excel 2007 introduced the SUMIFS function which allowed for multiple conditions. However, if you are using any version prior to Excel 2007 or if the persons who will be using your Excel workbook will be using a version prior to Excel 2007, then the SUMIF function will throw up an error.

That is a problem a colleague faced at work. To solve this problem you can use SUMPRODUCT along with double negation. The double negation is simply two minus signs one after an another. The net effect is that it doesn’t change the value of the calculations.

The reason we use the double negation is because, Excel does not always understand that TRUE=1 and FALSE=0 when you use SUM or SUMPRODUCT.

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Run Internet Explorer on Linux

You may hate Internet Explorer, but it is one of the most used browsers today. A web designer needs to ensure that his/her site works perfectly across browsers and across platforms. If you’re on Linux, then TechRepublic tells you how to Run Internet Explorer on Linux.

WordPress Wednesday: Implementing Asides in 3 Steps

I always wondered how Mark had those small yellow posts over at Weblog Tools Collection. It was only after a while that I realized that they are what are called Asides.

Asides as the name goes is something aside your normal content. I use the asides to link to to posts on which I don’t want to comment much about. However, I feel it valuable to point my visitors towards that link.

The Codex article on Asides is the first place to start and proved to me to be a great help when I wanted to implement asides on both my blogs.

You have the option to implement asides using WordPress plugins or if you’re like me, you would prefer modifying your template files to implement the same. Without further ado, let me explain how I implemented asides on this blog.
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