Category: Microsoft Office

In the previous instalment on querying economic data with SQL we saw a problem not uncommon in the world of worksheets-as-database. Errors and inconsistencies that seem trivial when looking at the data themselves become annoying impediments to creating the pivot table we want. In many cases, the traditional tools of the SQL database are well […]

Data Visualization Today, the phrase “Data visualization” evokes mental images of beautiful images, works of art, really, that convey information about our world. But we’ve all seen other beautiful images that seem to have a point, but it’s difficult to discern what that point actually is. The heart and soul of data visualization is the quick, […]

As we noted in the previous post on how to use Power Pivot Linked Tables, a wealth of economic information is available for download from banks and government agencies, as well as the United Nations. Unfortunately, the structure of that data differs from source to source, and rarely does it meet our requirements as is. In […]

It seems almost trivial to say that Excel is a spreadsheet application. Yet, many organizations use Excel workbooks as a repository for data, in other words, as a database system. I myself have seen United States military operations executed from worksheets, pretty much because the people involved weren’t quite sure how to use Access. For […]

Excel Array Functions In a previous instalment, we saw how to use MINVERSE, one of Excel’s built-in array functions and we saw how we can use <ctrl><shift><enter> to insert the array result into a rectangular array of cells. We also mentioned that many Excel experts, like Mr. Excel, call such functions “CSE” functions, as a […]