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What is XML?
XML stands for “extensible markup language”. XML is a structured way of formatting information so that it may be read by different systems. To see an example of XML, open a new browser window and paste http://articles.excelyogi.com/sitemap.xml in the URL bar. once open, right click and choose “view source”. The result is the XML version of excelyogi’s sitemap. We use this to tell search engines where all of our content is contained.

There are many XML feeds available on the internet, a simple Google search for “XML feeds” returns millions of results. Some of the more useful and/or practical ones are those from financial sources like stock market information.

In this XML guide we are going to pull in a simple weather feed that contains current weather information for Los Angeles, California. Our XML feed address is: http://weather.gov/xml/current_obs/KCQT.xml . We will be using Excel 2007 in this guide, please note that versions prior to 2003 do not support XML and only professional versions in 2003 support XML.

Getting Started:
Step 1: Open a new Excel workbook and from the ribbon, select Data=>From Other Sources=>From XML Data Import. “From Other Sources” can be found in the “Get External Data” section of the data menu.

Step 2: In the “File Name” bar of the window that opened, enter: http://weather.gov/xml/current_obs/KCQT.xml

Step 3: You may get a schema problem popup, simply select OK to have Excel fix.

Step 4: In the “Import Data” window that is now open, select new worksheet, then OK

If everything went as expected, you should now see a worksheet full of Los Angeles current conditions data. That is essentially it!

Now the fun part:
While the sheet with the weather data is selected, go to data then properties. In the refresh control section of the window that opens you can select when and how often you would like Excel to update the feed. Using this functionality you could potentially have a fully automated workbook, displaying various data (weather in this case), and run calculations against the data as you would in any worksheet.

I think you will find this to be one of the most powerful tools in workbook design. With millions of feeds available online and many corporate systems dumpling XML feeds, the possibilities are unlimited!

Joseph Harris
Excel Help

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Easily track your progress within the P90X program. Easier to use than the forms that come with the program.

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=iserror(A1)

A1 is the cell you want to test for an error. If A1 contains #N/A, #VALUE!, #REF!, #DIV/0!, #NUM!, #NAME!, or #NULL!, the result will be TRUE, otherwise it will be FALSE.

The most common usefor this function is within the IF function to check for error and then handle it. For example:

if(iserror(A1), B1,A1)

The formula above checks A1 for an error, if there is an error it takes the value in B1, otherwise it will use the value in A1. This is also useful within the vlookup function since non matched values will return an error.

Joseph Harris
Excel Help

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The template is a very simple and quick way to generate calendars for future years, simply add the year and the day of the month the year starts on.

Joseph Harris
Excel Help

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1. Select your data set (hilight) and select conditional formatting under the home tab on the ribbon (2007)
2. Select Color Scales=>More Rules
3. From here is is preference. I like to select “3 color scale”. I keep type and value at the default. I do like to change the colors to more of industry (and logical) colors. If the high number is bad, I use: low value color = White, Midpoint color = yellow, low value color = Red.
4. Select OK

If you followed the steps above, you shoudl now have a heatmap similar to the one below.

Joseph Harris
Excel Help

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Standard software solutions you would expect to find are programs like Ariba, SAP, Oracle, Emptoris, BravoSolution and Zycus but this study finds that the highest performing companies use Excel. Microsoft Excel is the preferred method of running procurement organizations. We can see Best in Class organizations that fully utilize the 65,536 rows offered by Excel are simply unbeatable in terms of sourcing process efficiency, total cost of ownership (TCO) analysis as well as bid optimization also made easy with Excel’s easy-to-use macros and pivot tables. In addition, we’ve seen a number of companies increase their Microsoft Office training programs to get high-level executives and other key stakeholders on board. In short, Microsoft Excel has become an essential tool for supply chain transformation.”

“Quite frankly, it has just gotten too complicated out there,” one CPO of a global automotive manufacturer suggested. “I’ll still e-mail the files back and forth to the people who need to see them — I think we’re setting up a pretty solid system of version control where if any one employee changes the sheet somehow, they just make a new version and e-mail it out to everyone again. With Skype and other instant messaging technologies we just tell our colleagues, “I’ve got Master.”

One CEO of a software company that asked not to have their name attributed to the study noted that “our users have always demanded that we provide a user interface that is just like Excel, so, we took it one step further and actually built the entire spend management suite in Excel. It’s really amazing what you can do with macros in the latest version of Office. It is nothing less than the mass democratization of Spend Management back to the desktop where it belongs. Clouds are great for my daughter’s bedroom wallpaper — just like unicorns and butterflies — but do procurement professionals really want to their critical information out there posted on Facebook? I think not.”

Security is also factoring into the equation for others. “What we like most about Microsoft Excel, which other providers can’t provide, is the number of anti-virus options we can deploy, given our need for confidentiality,” an A/P Director at a large financial services firm shared with Spend Matters. “Excel does exactly what our company needs; Forget all this fancy e-invoicing and automation. I need to see exactly who’s getting paid what without broadcasting our confidential information to the world. After the fact is better than not knowing at all. Moreover, I trust IT to make sure Microsoft products keep our enterprise safe from viruses, malware and other nasties.” This executive also notes that she has seen “great success without a single system crash when sharing a workbook with 256 concurrent users.”

<A href=”http://articles.excelyogi.com”>Excel help</a>

Original Article: http://www.spendmatters.com/index.cfm/2011/4/1/Spend-Matters-Study-Forget-Ariba-SAP-and-Oracle–World-Class-Procurement-Organizations-Use-Excel

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Purchase and Install

The Excel to PowerPoint converter cost $4.99 so my expectation was low. I purchased the add-in and an automatic download began. The install was a simple standard add-in installation, they provided directions within the file. The add-in added a “Excel to PowerPoint” button to my toolbar.

Usability

To begin, I created a fake excel workbook full of charts and data tables. Once my workbook was complete I clicked the Excel to Powerpoint Converter button. A simple window opened asking me to select the tabse I wanted to convert from a list, I selected all the tabs. I was then given the option of selecting convert charts only or entire worksheets to PowerPoint. I chose entire worksheets. Next I pressed OK. PowerPoint opened and was populated with the contents of my entire workbook in under 5 seconds.

Verdict

Wow! I am impressed, for $4.99 you cant go wrong. This is a very simple, yet powerful tool. I highly recommend it to anyone that works in both Excel and PowerPoint.

Excel to PowerPoint Converter
Subsidium Excel Add-Ins

Thanks,
Joseph Harris

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If in cell A1 you have: ‘output
Then in cell B1 type =clean(A1). The result will be: output

Joseph Harris
Excel Help

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For example:

=Large(A2:E2,3) will return the 3rd largest value in the data set.
=Small(A2:E2, 2) will return the 2nd smallest value in the data set.

Joseph Harris
Excel Help

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