Excel basics day 3: work that data

Just in time for hump day it’s time to WORK…THAT… DATAAAA!

Today I will show you how to quickly get a feel for a data set with some basic manipulation.

We explore a quick way to get answers like:

1. What is the most common town name in the US?
2. How many of my town names are there?

No need to do the work, let Excel do it for ya!

Video Breakdown

• 14 seconds: DATA tab and ‘Remove Duplicates’
  • I like this one. You copy off a full column to an empty space. Make sure this new column is selected and go to your DATA tab. There will be a ‘Remove Duplicates’ button in the Data Tools section of the ribbon.
• 32 seconds: =COUNTIF(Range,Criteria) function
  • Essentially its like I have a magic wand and a bag of skittles. I can tell the wand “Hey look at [THAT BAG OF SKITTLES], I wonder how many [RED] ones there are?” The bag is the range, and the red ones are the criteria.
• 56 seconds: Copy and Paste as Value
  • Excel can have lots of things in cells. One is a formula. Formulas are dynamic, and can change when the input data changes. However, if we want the data to be static and not depend on other cells, we can select a range and turn it to straight text! This is done by going to an edge of your selection and holding right click on it. You then drag the selection to a desired place, or onto the existing one and release selecting ‘Copy as Value’.
• 1 minute 5 seconds: Filter
  • This is a handy feature. In the DATA tab, you click ‘Filter’. This will allow you to sort, segment, and play with data more freely!