Get your spring semester off to a great start! The Altshuler Learning Enhancement Center (A-LEC) has partnered with OIT to offer student workshops that can help you make the best of your spring. Located in the Loyd All-Sports Center, the A-LEC is a great place to support your studies through your time at SMU. Continue reading A-LEC and OIT Team Up for Student Workshops
At the end of February, we sent out a survey to all SMU staff regarding their interest in Excel training. This survey was created as all of our Spring sessions were filled to capacity the same day registration was announced! We also had a number of staff inquire about attending student-only sessions. However, those sessions were also heavily attended; therefore, we could not meet staff requests for attendance.
In order to accommodate both staff and student requests, we have increased our class offerings. Four additional Excel training sessions will be offered this fall for students. Eleven Excel sessions will be delivered this spring marketed primarily to SMU Staff. Visit our website to register for one of the newly added Excel sessions. Continue reading Response to Excel Survey
Almost two dozen students attended last night’s Excel@Excel hands-on-workshop at SMU’s Altshuler Learning Enhancement Center. The OIT-lead workshop was part of the A-LEC’s practical learning strategy sessions offered throughout the term. A-LEC has partnered with OIT to facilitate four of the 25 sessions available to both undergraduate and graduate students.
Yesterday’s workshop covered the basics of Excel and an introduction to formulas. OIT will offer a second Excel workshop for students on February 25th that will explore more in-depth formulas and functions. While last night’s and the February 25th session are both a student-only training, IT Training regularly offers workshops for all members of the campus community. For more information about upcoming training opportunities, visit our IT Training workshop schedule.
“I’m excited that we have such great training opportunities for all of our campus,” stated Laurene Klassen, the Manager of IT Training, “but, let’s not forget the challenges that some people have to attend our workshops. I always try to encourage others to check out Lynda.com. So many people aren’t yet aware of the great online resources we have and I’m working hard to get the word out. Our Lynda.com license strengthens our training department by offering the courses we can’t regularly offer. Now, we have the tools to assist others to increase their learning by leaps and bounds.”
When working on spreadsheets you might have a need to have a column that has leading zeros. For example, let’s use an ID number, if I was to input the beginning of my id “0010” Excel would automatically remove the first two zeros. Here’s how to keep the leading zero in Excel:
4. Click OK. The column will now utilize the format you created!
By: Rajat Shetty
Excel Pivot tables help summarize your data. They also allow you to avoid using complex formulas like Vlookup, SumIF, etc. to create a table. It can take a little while for a newbie to get the hang of Pivot tables. However, the 2013 Excel updates make creating Pivot tables even simpler.
A few years back, we had to follow these steps to create a simple pivot table:
4. Manually drag and drop the required fields according to our requirements to calculate-Sum, average, percentage, etc.
With the new Microsoft Excel-2013, you are just one click away from creating a basic pivot table. The best part is you do not have to drag and drop anything into the field list. As seen to the right, you can pull the exact information you need from a complex spreadsheet without having to go through the above mentioned steps for Excel-2010.
Instead of inserting a Pivot table from the Insert tab, just click on the “Recommended Pivot Tables” option on the Insert tab.
As you can see in the above image, Excel automatically suggests three or four options for your data range. All you have to do is make sure that your cursor is in one of the data entries on the main sheet before you click on “Recommended Pivot Tables”.
When you select one of the recommended Pivot tables, it automatically adjusts the fields without the user having to drag and drop in the Pivot table field list. Once the Pivot table is created you can customize the fields according to your requirements.
In summary, we use the following steps to create a Pivot table using Excel-2013:
1. Organize and arrange data in columns
2. Make sure each column has a heading
3. Click on Insert and select the “Recommended Pivot Charts” option
4. Choose the desired Pivot table
5. Sit back and relax
Here’s looking forward to future updates from Microsoft Office. Maybe next time Excel will be even more intuitive.
