Q. Is it possible to sort a column in Excel using formulas rather than the Data tab’s Sort tool, so the sort process is performed automatically as I update my data? A. Excel has announced a new ...

Why spend an hour when one formula can do it in seconds?

Have you ever found yourself buried under a mountain of Excel spreadsheets, painstakingly updating formulas every time new data comes in? It’s a common struggle, one that can turn even the most ...

Excel’s BYCOL() and BYROW() functions evaluate data across columns and rows, returning an array result set allowing you to bypass a lot of work. Most Microsoft Excel functions are autonomous—one ...

Dynamic arrays change the rules for formula output in Excel. When I write a formula that returns a list by default, I need to decide whether I want the result to spill across a range of cells or ...

Excel doesn’t have a built-in AVERAGEIF() function, but you can still average values, conditionally. Excel has SumIf and CountIf, but no AverageIf. However, with a little array magic, you can get ...

Microsoft is making some improvements to how formulas work in Excel, with a new feature called Dynamic Arrays that allows formulas to output values to more than one cell at a time. Microsoft has ...

Since their introduction in 1993, PivotTables have remained one of Excel’s most powerful tools for summarizing and analyzing large datasets. With just a few clicks, you can transform raw, unstructured ...

is a senior correspondent and author of Notepad, who has been covering all things Microsoft, PC, and tech for over 20 years. Microsoft Excel used to only allow two types of data: text and numbers.