Excel validation lists avoid blanks and errors with TOCOL(ignore) plus FILTER; the spill range stays stable across worksheets.

Have you ever struggled to sort data in Excel in a way that truly fits your needs? Imagine trying to organize a list of regions not alphabetically, but in a specific order like “North, South, East, ...

The SORT and SORTBY functions let you extract certain columns and rows from a dataset and sort them in a certain order, all while preserving the source data. Even though they work in similar ways, ...

Excel's basic formulas work fine for simple calculations, but they quickly become cumbersome when you're dealing with complex data analysis. You end up with nested functions that are hard to read, ...

Filters are used to create subsets of data in a Microsoft Excel worksheet. The "AutoFilter" or "Sort and Filter" function in Excel allows you to create views of data matching your specified criteria.

Move beyond the basics of sums and averages. These tips open up all kinds of opportunities for working with spreadsheet data. Editor’s Note: This article was originally published in Sept. 2012 and the ...