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What would be in your Excel Survival Kit?

29th Jul 2014
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From the Not Just Numbers blog:

This weekend, I went on a bushcraft training weekend with my fifteen year-old son, building our own camp in the woods, etc.

This was an amazing experience and is still fresh in my mind as I write this blog post. So, it got me thinking, "In the Excel jungle, what would I have in my survival kit?"

I thought I'd ask myself the following question (and I'd love to hear your answers too, in the comments) - If I could only have three functions/features in Excel, what would they be? I am going to assume that basic mathematical functions like adding and subtracting and SUM are there, but what are the top three additional features that I wouldn't want to be without?

So, here are my top three (in no particular order):

 

  1. VLOOKUP - Having Excel look up information from tables elsewhere in the spreadsheet is an incredibly useful facility. I did, however, think for a while about this as I would have preferred INDEX and MATCH, but that would have taken up two of my choices!
  2. PivotTables - I use them all of the time and they remove the need for formulae in many cases.
  3. The IF statement - being able to get Excel to essentially make decisions based upon the information it has available is too useful a feature to give up!
Please let me know yours in the comments.
By the way, although you've missed the discount, you can still get Mynda Treacy's Excel Dashboards course until it is taken down on Thursday night.
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Replies (8)

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By paulwakefield1
29th Jul 2014 08:13

Just to have 3 different ones

Glen,

Can't disagree with your choice but 3 others for fun:

Status bar sums, count, etc.

Tables and filters

Keyboard shortcuts

 

Paul

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By majabl
29th Jul 2014 09:38

I think I agree with your three but I'd also need Autofilter. I'm not sure which of the four would inconvenience me least if I were to ditch it from the survival kit - a very tough decision!

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By ShirleyM
29th Jul 2014 09:43

Autofilter for me too

Also sort and subtotals. I tend to use both quite a lot when analysing expenses.

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By User deleted
31st Jul 2014 13:42

With Shirley ...

... SUM, SORT and FILTER, but what of COPY and PASTE - there must be 5!

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By KellyJM
07th Aug 2014 11:23

Three is not enough .........

I agree with your original 3 but I wouldn't like to live without SORT, KEYBOARD SHORTCUTS and AUTOFILTER either - so for me there must be 6!

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By david.brett
07th Aug 2014 12:33

Surviving Excel

Pivot tables a bit too complicated for some clients 8-). I'd go for:

SUBTOTAL - encompasses Sum, Count, etc and eliminates issue of including subtotals.

IF

VLOOKUP

If you want something more sophisticated to impress clients 8-) then I use this:

butterfly_rainbow_excelhero.com.xlsm

(Type the above into Google then open the link to retrieve the workbook)

D.

 

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By Gone Sailing
07th Aug 2014 12:48

SUMIF

I use SUMIF constantly and never use filters.

SUMIF to a concatenated reference avoids all sorts of new column and date range changes. Change one date in one box. Instant new set of figures. Magic.

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By Cantona1
08th Aug 2014 17:18

Given majority of questions being asked in excel blogs and forms are to do with matching data, I agree with Vlookup, but will replace it with Index and Match. It is much better and flexible than Vlookup.

Most of our daily lives are about decisions making, so there is hardly any left with out "IF"

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