27 Microsoft Excel Experts Predict The Future Of Excel In Business Intelligence

With over 750 million users worldwide, Microsoft Excel is the traditional tool of choice for presenting and analyzing data.

And now, it’s in a position to be the new BI tool of choice, as well. With Excel 2016, Microsoft announced some forward thinking built in Business Intelligence (BI) features. In the age of big data, this is huge.

This announcement, however, raised many questions in the field of big data manipulation. Is Excel powerful enough? Can it manipulate the amount and types of data businesses deal with today? Does Excel have a future in Business Intelligence workflows?

In the search of answers to these questions, we rounded up renowned MS Excel experts and picked their brains on it. We asked them one visionary question:

Where do you see the future of MS Excel in Business Intelligence Workflows?

And here is what they shared with us:

1. Purna Duggirala – Chandoo

Chandoo.org // @r1c1

Purna DuggiralaThere is a running joke in BI communities.

“What is the most used feature in any business intelligence solution?”
It is the Export to Excel button.

Jokes aside, Excel continues to be the #1 platform when it comes to analyzing data, finding information, preparing charts and presenting them to decision makers. In that sense, I see Excel playing a strong role in BI workflows in future.

Excel continues to be the #1 platform when it comes to analyzing data, finding information, preparing charts and presenting them to decision makers. In that sense, I see Excel playing a strong role in BI workflows in future.

– Purna Duggirala

With the addition of features like Power BI (Power Pivot, Power Query, Power View, Power Maps etc.) that naturally integrate with Excel, analysts, reporting professionals and BI people are finding Excel more relevant for full-length BI implementations.

In order to remain the favorite analytics app of everyone, Excel needs to do what it is amazingly good for. These are – offer a sandbox-like environment where anyone can play with data and come up with information, keep the Excel software offerings clean & simple (with the addition of Power BI, buying and using Excel has become a complex process), give users competent & compatible Excel apps for tablet & phone devices and include features to do powerful data analytics processes with one-click (as against a complex set of formulas, pivot tables & manual steps that many analysts do now).

Long live Excel.

2. Ken Puls – Excel Guru

Excelguru.ca // @kpuls

Ken PulsI personally see Excel as THE future of Business Intelligence workflows.

No matter how many systems a company has, how big they are, or how many millions of dollars have been spent on them, the reality is that the majority of data is exported to Excel before decisions of serious consequence are made. I’d go so far as to say that there are only a handful of finance departments in the world who don’t run their critical decision making analysis through Excel.

With the increasingly diverse toolset being added to Excel — Power Query to source and clean data from disparate dirty sources, Power Pivot to aggregate those disparate sources into business intelligence models, Power View to create dynamic dashboards from those models and Power Map to tell the data story on a geo-spatial plane – it’s very clear that Microsoft is investing heavily to make Excel the Business Intelligence tool of choice.

I personally see Excel as THE future of Business Intelligence workflows.

– Ken Puls

The killer for Excel today is not the fact that it isn’t the best out there for building business intelligence, it is the fact that far too many users are ignorant of the vast amount of capability that was added in the last five years. The attitude of “Excel can’t do that” is still pervasive and relied upon by its competitors to sell THEIR products.

My advice to anyone looking at building business intelligence systems today and considering switching to a competitor’s product: find a business intelligence expert who REALLY uses Excel. Ask them what can be done. Chances are you already own the software that will do it all, you’re just not aware of how.

3. Bill Jelen

Mrexcel.com // @MrExcel

Bill Jelen

The new Power BI Desktop offering from Microsoft will make it easy to create powerful dashboards that you can share to various end points such as iPads within your organization. The easiest way to get data into Power BI is from an Excel file, so Excel continues to be the most important component in the Power BI workflow.

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9 Handy IFTTT Recipes To Automate Office 365 Tasks

When you have the Internet, your productivity can increase drastically. It all depends on how you use it.

If you constantly work on the Internet, then you probably already know all about IFTTT (If This Then That), the online service that automates your daily tasks by connecting popular web services that you use every day.

And IFTTT recently got Office 365 signed on as a service. Now a few of your favourite Office 365 apps are available as IFTTT channels: OneDrive, Mail, Calendar, and Contacts.

Knowing how often you use Office 365 yourself, you can imagine what kind of automated tasks are possible. In this blog post, you’ll learn how to start up your collection of Office 365 IFTTT recipes for some of the most simplest and common tasks you do on a daily basis.

Remember—if you don’t see a recipe that works for you, you can always create your own when you sign up to IFTTT.

Office 365 Contacts Reminder

Create A Calendar Reminder To Follow Up With Newly Added Contacts In A Week

Networking can be considered an art, which admittedly sometimes, requires help in not only remembering people, but proper networking etiquette, as well. Set a calendar reminder to follow up with new Office 365 contacts when you add them on.

Create A Task Card In Trello For Each Of  Your Meetings

Sometimes your schedule can be too hectic to remember the standard follow up tasks–esecially for meetings. Well, if you’re a Trello user, there’s a recipe that will allow you to create task cards reminding you to follow up with meeting notes.

Weather Office Calendar Reminder

Add A Calendar Reminder To Bring An Umbrella

Hate it when you get caught in the rain? If you aren’t in the habit of checking the weather forecast, this neat little recipe can  check in for you. It can give you an automatic Office 365 Calendar reminder to take your umbrella if rain is predicted for the day. Don’t ever get caught unprepared ever again!

Send Your Team A Note That Food Has Arrived

Who doesn’t love group lunches at the office? In workplaces where everyone is spread out among departments, you can save yourself a trip around the office and instantly inform your co-workers that their food has arrived. This “Do” Button Recipe isn’t your traditional “if this, then that recipe.” Instead of combining two actions, you use a single “Do” button on your phone to send an email to their inboxes.

Get A Notification When You Receive A High Priority Email

If you’re expecting an important email, you don’t have to sit around and wait for it. With this recipe, you can get iPhone notifications when you receive a high priority email in your Office 365 Mail inbox. This is a great way to free up your time and let IFTTT keep an eye out for you.

Save Gmail Attachments IFTTT

Archive Incoming Email Attachments To OneDrive

This recipe can help you save attachments you receive to your OneDrive account, allowing you to create an online database that makes it easy to store and find any important files you receive.

Download Liked Tracks From SoundCloud To OneDrive

Where would your productivity be without your music? If you’re a SoundCloud user, you can collect your favourite music and access it directly from your computer with this recipe that lets you download liked tracks on SoundCloud to OneDrive.

Save Your Instagram Photos To OneDrive

If you love taking pictures or are into photography, then you’re probably posting your shots to Instagram on a regular basis. With this recipe you can automatically save your Instagram photos to OneDrive and create an instant backup of all your photos.

Facebook Photos OneDrive IFTTT

Save the Facebook Photos You’re Tagged In To OneDrive

Can’t keep track of the Facebook photos you’re in? Just connect the Facebook and OneDrive channels to stay on top of it. This recipe lets you save any Facebook pictures that your friends tag you in. It’s a neat and easy way to start your own collection of photos with your friends.

There are a ton of other channel combinations you can use with Office 365. It’s just a matter of making the connections between the services you use on a daily basis.

Got your own suggestions? Help expand on this list by sharing some of your own recipes.

How To Work Faster With Your PDFs Using Able2Extract 9

How effectively do you convert PDF files? Are you spending more time on setting things up? Making formatting adjustments after conversion? Checking in for conversions to start and end?

Well, with this short guide, we’re putting our foot down on some of the most common PDF conversion time-wasters.

If you’ve got Able2Extract, you may already be familiar with a few of the features on this list. But if you haven’t given them much thought before, you’ll want to take a closer look now. Because when combined, they can eliminate a majority of the small tasks that add up and slow you down.

Specify Custom PDF To Excel Settings Only Once

Performing a custom PDF to Excel conversion is one of the most effective ways to get your spreadsheet data right. But it’s all too easy to get caught up in getting the rows and columns formatted just right. This is why Able2Extract offers Custom Excel Templates.

When you use this feature, you can easily save your column structure and use it to instantly convert other PDF tables that are formatted in the same way. You don’t have to reset your parameters or remember how you set your conversion up.

Custom Excel Template Option

Once you have a template saved, you can simply load it to perform the same conversion any time. So if you’re dealing with customer data or PDF invoices in standardized forms, this feature can do a lot of the leg work for you.

Quickly Open PDFs Without Clicking

When opening a PDF file, you probably waste more than 4 clicks to get it open and set up. Did you know that Able2Extract will let you open a file in less than half of that? Try a couple of these quick PDF-opening tricks:

  • Drag the PDF onto the Able2Extract shortcut on your desktop

This will open a new window of Able2Extract when you want to quickly start viewing a PDF in isolation, away from PDFs to be converted or edited.

Opening PDF With Shortcut

  • Drag PDF documents into the Able2Extract 9 interface

Doing this will open a PDF file within the application simply by dragging your PDF into the open application. No double clicking needed. Use this trick to work with a specific group of PDFs at the same time which aren’t located in the same folder.

Opening PDF By Dragging

Automatically Convert To Different Microsoft Office Versions

We know that not everyone uses the same version of Microsoft Office. At one point or another, you probably came across this compatibility issue with others. Ever have to re-convert a PDF or re-save the converted Office file?

Well, instead of re-working the already converted Word, Excel or PowerPoint data, Able2Extract will let you switch up the default format even before you start converting the PDF.

Usually, Able2Extract will convert your data to the Office version you have installed by default. But you can also set the Office output format to 2007 so you convert to the .docx format regardless of the Office version you have installed.

  1. Go to View> Conversion Options
  2. In the dialog, depending on the format you’re using you can,
  • Switch the PowerPoint default format from the General tab
  • Switch the Microsoft Word default format from the Word tab. You can choose between .RTF and Word 2007.
  • Switch the Microsoft Excel default format from the Excel tab. Select between .CSV and Excel 2007.

To make things even easier, you can save your conversion settings as a file. This way you can easily switch between different Office output settings as needed.

Convert To Different Worksheets With One Click

Excel conversions are hard to nail. Oftentimes, you may opt to simply extract everything into one worksheet and then spend a few minutes, post-conversion, moving data around into different worksheets.

If that’s the case, then you should take a look at the Excel Single Worksheet feature. With this functionality, Able2Extract converts selected data from your PDF into one single Excel worksheet.

Excel Single Worksheet Option

By default this is turned on. So if you want to break up your converted data and get each page into separate worksheets for more precise conversions, you can do so before you convert. Here’s how:

  1. Go to the View menu
  2. Click on Excel Single Worksheet to remove the checkmark next to it.

Microsoft Excel Multiple Worksheets

Or you can simply hit F5 to turn the feature off.

Automate And Perform Multiple PDF Conversions At Once

With Able2Extract’s batch conversion, you can get the most done with the least amount of effort. Of all the features in this list, the Batch Conversion option is the one that saves you the most time as it works on multiple PDFs at once. If you have a handful of straightforward conversions to the same format, use this feature.

Automating Batch PDF Conversion

The process is automated, so you don’t have to sit and supervise each process as Able2Extract goes down the list. Just set it up and Able2Extract will take care of the rest. You can quickly access the feature from the command toolbar or by hitting CTRL + V.

How to Create Your Own Customized Tab In Microsoft Word 2013

No doubt that when you create a Microsoft Word document, you have one or two tools that you always use. But if those tools span a wide range of functionality, they’ll be scattered across the ribbon, forcing you to click and toggle between tabs and bury it back into the Ribbon every time.

To solve this issue, you can customize the Quick Access Toolbar and even create a few shortcuts for your formatting functions. But why not take your productivity even further and create your own tab?

You can easily get your most commonly used functions on one single tab in Microsoft Word 2013. This way every command you need is right at your fingertips without having to go back and forth between different tabs. Here’s how.

1. Right click on any tab and select Customize the Ribbon.

Customizing the Ribbon

2. In the following dialog, click on New Tab.

Creating New Tab

To label it, right click on it and select Rename. Click on OK

3. Next, create a group to organize your commands by functionality (eg. Formatting, Editing, etc.). To do this, click on New Group. You can rename and add icons for each group by right clicking on it and selecting Rename. Do this for each group you want on your tab.

Creating New Group

Now you can start adding commands to them.

4. To add commands to a specific group, ensure that the group is selected and highlighted. Then in the Choose Commands from column, find and select your favourite command. Click on Add. Or you can drag and drop the command directly into the group. Repeat this for every command you want to include.

Adding Commands to Tab

If you’d like to change the order, simply rearrange them by moving them up or down the list.

5.  Click on OK when you’re finished and your customized tab will be added to the main Ribbon.

New Tab in Ribbon

There are a number of ways to get Microsoft Word customized to your liking. Getting your very own tab set up is one of the easiest ways to do it. What other ways do you have MS Word 2013 tailored to your needs?

3 Tips On How To Use Excel For Calculating Taxes From PDF Data

Calculating-Taxes-Excel Photo Credit: gonzalo_ar via photopin cc

Tax season rolls around every year and with it comes the head ache of getting organized. It means digging up year old statements and revisiting your ledgers, which is a daunting task in itself. Even worse, if you’re a procrastinator, it may mean the added stress of finding walk-in tax centres booked solid, forcing you to take the DIY approach.

Admittedly, doing taxes yourself can be risky. But user-friendly tax software and speedy e-filing methods are incentive enough to make the attempt. Getting the numbers right is what matters most.  For that, there’s Microsoft Excel, one of the handiest tools for calculating and dealing with complex data.

If it’s your first time doing your taxes online, we’ve got a few important pointers that can make working with taxes and Excel easier for you.

1. Insert, Adjust And Calculate Your Tax Data In Spreadsheets 

Tax CalculatorPhoto Credit: Jorge Franganillo via photopin cc

First off, to calculate your income taxes, you first need to calculate your taxable income. To do this, convert your financial data into Excel so you can work in your applicable deductions, credits, and exclusions using Excel formulas and functions. They can seem scary and complicated, but once you get the hang of them, they are invaluable!

Second, because all invoices and tax deductible receipts are different, you want to ensure that your converted data is properly adjusted and laid out.  If you’re calculating your federal income tax using tables in Excel, your results depend on where the data is placed. Thus, correctly inserting disparate data from the start will help prevent major calculation errors.

Able2Extract Excel Preview Panel A custom PDF to Excel conversion though can fix the alignment of cells and their data just where you need them. Able2Extract lets you manually move the row and column lines and even give you a preview of how the data will look in your spreadsheet.

2. Use Separate Worksheets For Data Calculations

Every tax filing is different and depending on your situation you may need to use supplemental tax forms and schedules. You may also need other tools, like updated tax tables or the tax computation worksheet from the 1040 US tax return instructions.  So consolidating your data where needed can be an efficient way to stay organized.

Excel Worksheet Names

Every tax form, calculation, or schedule requires special attention. Consequently, you may want to use separate worksheets for different schedules or forms. This way you can set each one up with defined formulas for calculating specific data.

This has a lot of convenient benefits. Each year, you can go back to the same worksheet and just drop your updated numbers in. If you need numbers from different PDF statements, you can convert the relevant data into the same worksheet using Able2Extract.

Able2Extract Custom Excel TemplateMoreover, its custom Excel template feature, you can set up your Excel conversion once, save it as a template (seen above), and use it on next year’s PDF statements, which, more than likely, will be formatted with the same layout.

3. Keep Data Formatting Consistent 

Consistent Data FormattingPhoto Credit: Jorge Franganillo via photopin cc

If you use different Excel formatting due to language and cultural preferences (commas for decimals or pound signs instead of dollar signs, for instance), you should make sure that all notations are consistent to avoid misinterpretation. Fortunately, Microsoft Excel is highly specialized in formatting and manipulating data.

To fix the formatting in Excel, you can use the Sort & Filter and Data Tools section in the Data tab or the Numbers and Editing sections in the Home tab.  To do this even more efficiently, reformat your PDF data even before it even reaches the spreadsheet. With PDF receipts and records, you can change the notation and formatting during the PDF to Excel conversion.  

Able2Extract Excel Conversion Parameters

Using the MS Excel conversion parameters in Able2Extract will adjust your data to fit the format you want to use in your spreadsheet, like whether or not to replicate the fonts from the PDF. Retain the dollar sign as a separate symbol, use European continental settings, or treat rows as columns and vice versa.