Contextures News 20150324

Find Pivot Table Source Data + more Excel tips

March 24, 2015

Find and fix the source data for a pivot table, when you run into problems. See how it works, and more, in this week's Excel news. Visit my Excel website for more tips, tutorials and videos, and check the index for past issues of this newsletter.

Note: For some products mentioned below, I earn a commission on sales. That helps support the free tutorials on my site.

• Fix Pivot Table Source Data
• More Excel Tips
• Excel Announcements
• Video: Enter Dates and Times
• Weekly Photo: Start the Garden
• Featured Excel Product

Find and Fix Pivot Table Source Data

After you create a pivot table, you might add or change records in the source data. Sometimes the pivot table does not update correctly, to show the new data. Or, you might not even be able to find the source data, in a large workbook.

To help with these problems, I've added a new page on my Contextures site, with tips for finding and fixing the source data for a pivot table.

Read the details on my website, and watch the video, to see how it works: Find and Fix Pivot Table Source Data

More Excel Tips

Here are a few of the Excel articles that I read recently, that you might find useful:

• Sumit Bansal shows how to calculate shared expenses, which will help if you're sharing an apartment, or for other situations where you have to split the costs. You can download his template, and enter your own information.

• Jon Peltier explains how you can remove some or all of the Recent Colors from an Excel file. You don't need to use a macro, but you'll have to roll up your sleeves, and dig into the file's styles.xml document.

• If you play chess, you might find this article interesting -- Devin Camenares uses Excel to find which chess piece movements or placements are featured more often in wins versus losses. He uses a heat map to illustrate the usage.

• Chris Webb summarizes the latest news and updates for Power BI and Excel 2016 BI. This is a great way to catch up, if you've missed any of the announcements.

• Microsoft has announced the release of its Office 2016 IT Pro and Developer Preview for the Windows desktop, for commercial Office 365 customers.

• Chandoo shares his favourite keyboard shortcuts for Excel formatting. Do you use any of them, or do you use the mouse for formatting?

• Finally, for a humorous peek at what other people are saying about spreadsheets, read the latest collection of Excel tweets, on my Excel Theatre blog.

Excel Announcements

Here are some upcoming events, courses, recently published books, and other new items, related to Excel:

• Canada: Ken Puls, from ExcelGuru.ca, is running his Master Your Excel Data course in Victoria, BC (May 11th) and Kamloops, BC (May 15th). You'll need to have the Power Query add-in downloaded and installed on your computer.

• Amsterdam Excel Summit: Mark your calendar for April 13-15, so you can attend this amazing Excel event. Last year's summit was an outstanding success, and registration is now open, for this year's event.

Video: Enter Dates and Times

On a worksheet, you can enter dates and times that will update automatically, when the file opens. Those are helpful if you always want the current date, or date and time, to print. If you want the date/time to remain locked, you can use keyboard shortcuts to quickly enter them.

Click here to watch the short video that shows the date and time data entry tips: Enter Dates and Times

Start the Garden

Featured Excel Product

Last Thursday, I got an email from Chris W., who has been through the 3 courses at Excel University -- an online Excel training course designed specifically for accountants. Chris was very impressed with the content, and the customer service, and said that I could share his comments:

• "I have taken all three of the Excel University courses and found them to be quite informative and beneficial to my work...the real value behind these courses is Jeff Lenning, the course creator and instructor. Not only is his style very clear an engaging, he is most attentive to any questions or clarifications you might have. I have emailed him at 7:30 pm on a Sunday evening and have gotten responses within the hour."

That's it for this week! If you have any comments or questions, send me an email.

Debra Dalgleish
dsd@ contextures.com

P.S. You can choose the full Contextures news package (news and occasional special announcements), or basic news package (news only). Click either link to change your option.