(Dev) Fix All Excel Errors

Category: Data Validation

  • What You Should Use Excel For?

    What You Should Use Excel For?

    Microsoft Excel, the topmost spreadsheet application, offers plenty of benefits for individuals and business organizations. Being one of the most popular software, people across all industries use Excel for storing, organizing, and tracking data. With various functions and formulas, making calculations on Excel becomes highly convenient.

    This guide will highlight the many uses and benefits of Microsoft Excel and show you why you should learn and be familiar with Excel.

    What is Excel Used For?

    Excel is mainly used for storing and calculating data. Accounting teams often use it for financial reporting and analysis. Some examples of Excel applications include editorial calendars, budgets, and balance sheets.

    Thanks to its strong computational power, the spreadsheet program creates accurate financial documents. Accounting professionals use the software to calculate averages, sums, and totals. Excel helps them make sense of their business documents.

    Accounting-Excel

    Although Excel is primarily used for accounting purposes, professionals from any field can use its formulas and features. For instance, marketers can use Excel to track different types of data.

    You don’t have to spend hours counting cells or copying/pasting numbers. Excel offers quick accounting solutions to speed up data analysis and financial reporting.

    Microsoft Excel allows you to analyze data and help in decision-making processes. It is an affordable and efficient solution, whether you use Excel to manage your personal or business expenses and databases.

    Top Reasons for Using Excel

    Here are some of the best reasons for using Microsoft Excel.

    Data Analysis and Reporting

    One of the best benefits of Excel is robust data analysis and reporting. Using Excel spreadsheets allows you to calculate large amounts of data with efficient sorting, filtering, and search tools. Search tools can narrow down the criteria that will help your decisions.

    Combine all these tools with graphs and pivot tables and get all the necessary information. The software is scalable, and you can easily use it at home or at work.

    500+ Features

    This powerful software has more than 500 built-in functions that you can use for performing specific calculations. For example, Goal Seek is an in-built function in Advanced Excel Functions. This feature allows users to get their desired output when changing assumptions. This process depends on the trial-and-error method for getting results. And even if you find that the 500+ built-in functions don’t serve your need, you can write your very own user-defined function.

    Some other essential features in Excel include:

    VBA/Macro Coding

    VBA or Visual Basic Application is a subset of the powerful Visual Basic programming language. It comes with most Office applications. While VBA helps you automate processes between and within Office applications, it is not necessary to be familiar with computer programming or VBA code if the Macro Recorder does what you want.

    The macro recorder records all the steps in VBA or Visual Basic for Applications code. These steps include typing numbers or text, clicking commands on the menu or ribbon, formatting cells/rows/columns, and importing data from an external source.

    Import and Export Data

    Another important reason for using Excel is that it imports and exports several file types other than the standard XLSX format. Excel is compatible with many different systems. When users share data between other programs, such as a database, you may need to save data as a different file type. Using Excel as your source, importing financial data for annual or monthly periods becomes super easy.

    Benefits of Using Microsoft Excel

    This software is widely popular for finance and accounting purposes because it is easy to use. Excel has various front-end and back-end functions. For example, it can produce dashboard summaries and reports on the front end. On the back end, it stores and retrieves data for calculations.

    Graphs-Excel

    Excel allows users to draw actionable conclusions from data. This reason alone is why entrepreneurs and financial professionals master this program to benefit from its features.

    Here are some benefits of using Excel.

    Effective and Easy Analysis

    The efficient analytical tools of Excel allow users to analyze large amounts of data. That helps users discover patterns and trends that influence decisions. Thanks to the program’s graphing capabilities, you can quickly summarize data and organize it in a visually appealing manner.

    All the essential types of charts you need for presenting data are already there. With a single click, you can insert a table that fits your data. The software would also ‘recommend’ a chart for you.

    Collaboration

    The launch of the Excel Web App made it possible for users to work on spreadsheets with others. This functionality allows users to streamline their processes. It also gives more opportunities to ‘brainstorm’ sessions using large data sets.

    Thanks to these collaboration capabilities, you can use Excel Worksheets anywhere. You are no longer tied to your desk. That’s an ideal solution for business people on the go.

    Excel iPad and Mobile Apps

    Smartphones and tablets bring more convenience to our lives. Installing the Excel app on your device can open new possibilities. Now, you can take your worksheets to any meeting. Whether you visit a client or want to calculate finances from your couch, the spreadsheets are immediately available on your tablet or phone.

    Data Transformation

    You must deal with messy (unorganized) data in many situations. You can’t use this data without ‘cleaning’ or transforming it. This entire process can waste significant time and is also a tedious process.

    The efficient ‘power query’ is a data cleaning and transformation engine that can load data from multiple sources. The engine transforms it and loads it back to the worksheet. This powerful data automation tool allows users to import data through external sources, such as CSV files, Text files, and the Web.

    Bottom Line

    Most businesses and organizations use Excel for handling statistics, data, and finances. Entrepreneurs and companies also organize, calculate, and evaluate quantitative data. These features make Excel a robust data analysis and decision-making program.

  • Using Data Validation in Excel

    Using Data Validation in Excel

    Data validation in Excel allows us to set parameters on what can be entered into a cell and we can also choose what happens when invalid data is entered. This is very useful in keeping the data tidy. We have more predictable data which can help with future analysis and calculation. As a quick example, if we want to collect data on how many pets each person has, we may end up having data such as “one”, “2”, “2 dogs”, “none”. With data validation, we can make sure only whole numbers can be entered.

    How To Set Validation Criteria On Cell(s)

    To set up data validation:

    1. Highlight the cells (or range of cells) we want to apply data validation on
    2. Go to Data tab and select Data Validation:

      data_validation_setup
    3. By default of course, data validation would allow “any value” to be entered. Here in the “Allow” field, we can change that. Have a look at the list below

      data_validation
    Whole number & Decimal

    With whole number & decimal, we can make sure only numbers are entered into the cell. Of course choose wisely whether whole number or decimal should be selected. With example given at the very top, if we want to count the number of pets each person does, having decimals would not make much sense so whole number would be preferred.

    Once whole number or decimal is selected, we will need to set further parameters around what numbers can be entered.

    data_validation_numbers

    Again this can be particularly useful as we can further narrow down what can be entered. As an example if we are collecting data on how many days people are exercising in a month, it will be wise to set the parameter between 0 to 31 as you can’t have negative days or more than 31 days in a month.

    If we want to allow a wide range of numbers to be entered, we can always set whole number/decimal between -100000000000 to 100000000000.

    Date & Time

    Date and time are similar to whole number and decimal. Once we selected either one, we will need to set further parameters to narrow down what can be entered. For example we can set validation criteria so that only time can be entered and must be greater than 6pm

    Tip:

    In Excel, 1 is represented as 1 day (24 hours). So 6pm (18:00) as a number is 3/4 (18/24) as a number. For more information, you can read more here: Date/Time in Excel. What it means here is if we set “greater than” 18:00 as validation criteria, Excel will allow us to enter any value greater than 0.75 even including 421 or 129 or 492 although these numbers are clearly not a time.

    To solve this, instead of using “greater than”, use “between” and set end time as 23:59. Doing this you will be able to prevent users from entering numbers such as 1 or greater. Fractions can still be entered as long as when converted back into time, they fall within the validation criteria.
    List

    This allows us to add a dropdown list. You can find more information here: Dropdown List in Excel. On that page, we go through how to add a dropdown list using data validation. And also how to add a dropdown list where the list changes depending on the value in another cell. For example:

    data-validation-two-dropdown-lists

    What To Do When Invalid Data Is Entered

    We can also choose what happens when invalid data is entered. Go to the Error Alert tab after clicking on Data Validation:

    data-validation-error-alerts

    By default, Excel will always stop invalid data from being entered. An error message will pop up and the invalid data will be removed from the cell. In the Title and Error message fields, we can customize the message

    Warning and Information are rather similar. Once invalid data is entered, an error message will still pop up. However we would have the option to allow or remove the data.

    data-validation-information-alert

    If we click “OK”, we are acknowledging the invalid data and allowing it to be entered. But if we click Cancel, the data will be removed.