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Questions tagged [microsoft-excel]

A spreadsheet application by Microsoft. Use this tag along with [vba] if your question involves programming Excel in VBA, and with [worksheet-function] if it involves an Excel formula or worksheet function. Also add the the specific version tag (e.g. [microsoft-excel-2019] or [microsoft-excel-365]) as features and functions may vary between them.

Microsoft Excel is a spreadsheet application written and distributed by Microsoft for Microsoft Windows and macOS. It features calculation, graphing tools, pivot tables and a macro programming language called VBA (Visual Basic for Applications).

Microsoft Excel 2010

Features and usage

The latest version is Excel 2021 for Windows and macOS. Features include calculation, graphing tools, pivot tables and a macro programming language called VBA (Visual Basic for Applications). A new user-interface design, dubbed the "ribbon", was introduced with Excel 2007 for Windows. A similar UI was introduced to Excel 2011 for OS X.

Excel is the among most widely used spreadsheet programs, especially in business environments. The first version was introduced in 1993, and new versions have been released every 2–3 years since then.

Recent versions

Subscription based license/version

Windows (stand-alone license/version)

Mac (stand-alone license/version)

Other tags

More specific tags include for scripting, for formulas and for pivot tables.

More information

Samples and Tips

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How do I get the distinct/unique values in a column in Excel?

If I have a column with values, and I want to find out what distinct values are in there (not how many - but the actual distinct values), how can I do that? In SQL Server I would do something like SELECT Distinct(MyColumn) FROM MyTable
Kjensen
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Easiest way to open CSV with commas in Excel

CSV files are automatically associated with Excel but when I open them, all the rows are basically in the first column, like this: It's probably because when Excel thinks "comma-separated values", it actually searches for some other delimiter (I…
Borek Bernard
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How can I "group by" and sum a column in excel?

I'm trying to figure out how to "group by" values in an Excel spreadsheet. Given the following example (this is an inventory sheet I use at my restaurant:) At the far right of the spreadsheet there is a column named Cost of Goods Sold. I would like…
Ian P
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How to easily reorder rows in excel with drag and drop or move-up or move-down?

I have to do some manual reordering or rows in Excel and cut/paste is too hard to use. I'm looking for something that would enable me to use drag'n'drop or to add some buttons to move-up/down move-top/bottom.
sorin
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Convert a column into a comma separated list

I have the task of creating a simple Excel sheet that takes an unspecified number of rows in Column A like this: 1234 123461 123151 11321 And make them into a comma-separated list in another cell that the user can easily copy and paste into another…
muncherelli
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14 answers

Why does Excel treat long numeric strings as scientific notation even after changing cell format to text

I'm trying to process some data in Excel. The data includes numeric account numbers and other long numeric strings (like cell phone MEIDs). I am not doing math operations on these strings, so I want Excel to treat them as plain text. Here is what is…
Michael Levy
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5 answers

Is it possible to paste CSV formatted data into Excel 2007?

I want to copy and paste CSV formatted text into Excel 2007. Is there a way of doing this without saving it to a temporary file first? I'm sure in previous versions of Excel there was a way to trigger the CSV import wizard by hand in this situation,…
therefromhere
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5 answers

Excel: how to undo in current file only?

Microsoft Excel's undo / redo feature behaves unlike any other program I know. The undo stack seems to be global across all open files, so that undoing sometimes switches to another file and undoes something you didn't want to undo. And if an edit…
Hugh Allen
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How do I join two worksheets in Excel as I would in SQL?

I have two worksheets in two different Excel files. They both contain a list of names, id numbers, and associated data. One is a master list that includes general demographic fields, and the other is a list that only includes name and id, and an…
Joel Coehoorn
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8 answers

Find Items in one column that are not in another column

I have two columns in Excel, and I want to find (preferably highlight) the items that are in column B but not in column A. What's the quickest way to do this?
C. Ross
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6 answers

How do I expand all columns in Excel spreadsheet?

I have a spreadsheet with many columns. The columns are all a small standard width. Double-clicking the partition line between columns will expand the column width to encompass the longest string in that column. Is there a shortcut to perform this…
MattUebel
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How can I stop Excel from eating my delicious CSV files and excreting useless data?

I have a database which tracks sales of widgets by serial number. Users enter purchaser data and quantity, and scan each widget into a custom client program. They then finalize the order. This all works flawlessly. Some customers want an…
atroon
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6 answers

Turn off scientific notation in Excel

I would like to prevent Excel behavior that any large number I enter is stored as a number, then abbreviated to scientific notation. Is it possible to tell Excel 2007 to stop doing this?
Pierre Gardin
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9 answers

How to get Excel to interpret the comma as a default delimiter in CSV files?

I have a number of .csv files. Some of them are comma delimited, some are tab delimited (maybe they should be called .tsv ...) The csv extension gets associated with Excel when Excel is installed. However, if I open one of these files with excel,…
Szabolcs
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9 answers

Excel - Prevent cell text from overflowing into next (empty) cell

When you have text in an Excel cell that is too long to be shown in the visible area of that cell, and the next cell on the right is empty, Excel lets the text be displayed in that next cell (and the next, and the next, as needed). I want to change…
e-mre
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