Move beyond the basics of sums and averages. These tips open up all kinds of opportunities for working with spreadsheet data. Editor’s Note: This article was originally published in Sept. 2012 and the ...

Whether you’re using Microsoft Excel 2008 ( ; $400 as part of Office 2008) or 2004, you need some tricks up your sleeve for easing day-to-day tasks, such as entering data or custom sorting, as well as ...

Have you ever grouped data in Excel only to find your months sorted alphabetically instead of chronologically? It’s a frustrating quirk of the GROUPBY function, one that can turn a clean dataset into ...

The Pareto Principle, also known as the 80-20 rule, is a powerful concept that can transform your approach to data analysis. This principle states that roughly 80% of effects come from 20% of causes.

Pivot tables are an excellent way to summarize, analyze, explore, and present your data. To use a pivot table, simply select the data range, go to the "Insert" tab, and click "PivotTable." Then, ...

Microsoft Excel has a great sorting feature that works quite well. However, it is possible to use this feature to sort cells based on their color. Multiple colors are supported, and from our testing, ...

Excel's ascending and descending sort options are powerful tools, but they won't always sort values in a familiar and meaningful way. When this is the case, you might need a custom sort. Sorting is a ...

If you work with data much, you don’t need a statistical model to predict that the odds of consistently getting data in the format you need for analysis are pretty low. Those who do a great deal of ...