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Excel Training

Contents
Pivot Tables.................................................................................................................................................2
Vlookup and Sumif......................................................................................................................................3
Subtotals......................................................................................................................................................4
Length function...........................................................................................................................................5
Left, Right, Mid function..............................................................................................................................5
Text to columns...........................................................................................................................................5
If is blank.....................................................................................................................................................6
Alt+Enter.....................................................................................................................................................6
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Pivot Tables

When we require to summarize and re-arrange the data in a format that is more meaningful for our audit
work, we (should) use Pivot Tables. This is probably the most useful tool that Excel has when
manipulating data, especially in the case of large amounts of data.

Please use excel file “Sales Customer Database” in order to create a Pivot Table. Can you determine the
total amounts per Customer number? Name the sheet as “Pivot”.
Hint: Select the entire database and hit on tab Insert, Pivot Chart. A message box will appear asking you
the range of the table (already selected) and where would you like to create the pivot, in a new worksheet
or an existing one. Click on a “new worksheet” and hit OK. Now drag on Rows the Cust no and Amounts
on Values.

Could you input also the Customer name?

Hint: Drag name on Rows. You will see that the customer account and name will be created by default on
different lines. For example, Customer number 10000 on line 4 and Customer name on line 5. We can
change the report layout by: left click on Pivot, Tab Design, Report Layout, Show in Tabular Form. In
order to remove the subtotals per customer, click on tab Design, Subtotals, Do not show subtotals. We
will now have the account number, account name and amount on a single line.
Pivot should look like:

Obs: Shortcut for creating a Pivot is ALT+N+V

Could you determine the amounts per customer, per month?

Hint: you will see that in Database sheet we have column B, containing the date. We can extract the
month for each line and create the pivot with the customer amounts per month.
Please insert a new column after the date column. Right click on column C and press Insert. (Obs:
shortcut for insert a new column is ALT+I+C). Name cell C1 as Month. On cell C2 insert formula
=month(b2) and format the cell as number. You can do this by selecting Home, number format. Drag the
formula for all lines and create a new pivot on sheet “Pivot”. Please see above details for creating a pivot.
The only difference compared to the previous step of pivot creation is that we will input the month on
columns.
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Vlookup and Sumif

Could you recreate the first Pivot by using formulas?

Hint: Please copy column Cust_no in a new sheet by selecting on Column F, Cust_no, right click, Copy.
Paste it in a new worksheet, in column A. Name the sheet “Vlookup and Sumif”. You will see that the
customer number 10102 is present on 2 different lines, line 9 and 10. We will need to remove this
duplicates in order to have a list of unique customer codes. In order to perform this operation, please
select column A and click on tab Data, Remove duplicates. We have now a list of unique codes.
Name cell B1 as Customer name and bring the name from Database sheet. We can perform this step by
using vlookup function.
The syntax of the VLOOKUP function is as follows:

VLOOKUP(lookup_value,table_array,col_index_num,range_lookup)

The lookup_value is sought in the first column of the table_array and, once found, returns as a result the
content of the cell on the col_index_num column from the table_array that is on the same row with the
identified lookup_value.

Our formula will look like: =VLOOKUP(A2,EX_01_SalesCustomerDetails!F:I,4,0). Copy the formula

for all customer codes.

In order to bring the amount for each customer, we will use Sumif formula.
Name cell C1 as Amount.
Sumif syntax is as follows:
SUMIF(range,criteria,sum_range)

Our formula will look like: =SUMIF(EX_01_SalesCustomerDetails!

F:F,A2,EX_01_SalesCustomerDetails!H:H)

The sumif formula works as follows: range is the column where we can find the customer, criteria is the
customer code which we are looking for and sum range is the column where we can find the amount.

Please create this formula starting with cell C2 and copy it for all customers.
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Subtotals
We insert subtotals when we aggregate a database at a synthetic level.

Could you insert subtotals for each customer numbers?

Hint: Copy the database in a new worksheet and name it Subtotals. In order to create subtotals for each
customer, we will first need to sort the database on an ascending or descending order of customer number.

In order to perform this step, please selected the entire database and create a filter by clicking on tab Data,
Filter. One of the shortcuts is CTRL+SHIFT+L. Open the filter by clicking on the arrow in column F,
right click on sort smallest to largest. The shortcut for open the filter is ALT+ upper arrow.

With the database selected, click on tab Data, Subtotal. A box with several information to be completed
will appear.

The main purpose is, at each change in the customer number, to compute the sum per amounts. These
details should be filled in each box, as presented above in the print screen.
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Length function
LEN function returns the number of characters in a text string. There are cases where we need to find the
numbers of characters of a cell. This can be performed using function LEN.

Could you find out how many characters each customer name has?

Hint: Please use function LEN. In order to perform this task, please copy the database in a new sheet and
name it “Len”. Name cell K1 as “LEN”. Formula should look like: =LEN(text).

Left, Right, Mid function

There are occasions when a cell contains a text from which we need to create useful data. For example, a
date is stored as text. We need to use specific Excel formulas, such as LEFT, RIGHT or/and MID in order
to extract the day, month and year.

Could you extract the month, day and year for each date?

Hint: In order to perform this task, please open file “Left, right, mid database” .On column B, we have the
invoice date. Please copy the database into a new sheet, name it “Left, Right, Mid” and create 3 additional
column and name them “day”, “month”, “year”. You will see that the date format is mmddyyyy. First
step is to extract de month by using formula Left (text). First 2 digits will represent the month. Year can
be extracted by using formula Right (text). In order to extract the day, please use formula Mid. Mid
formula syntax is MID(text,start_num,num_chars), so we will need to input formula: =MID(B2,3,2),
meaning that we need to extract from the content of cell B2, 2 characters, starting from the third one.

Additionally, we can create the date, by using formula Date. Syntax is date(Year, month, day). If we
created the month in cell J2, Day in cell K2 and Year in cell L2, date formula should look like
=DATE(L2,J2,K2)

Text to columns
In order to complete the above task, we can always use text to column function in Excel. There are 2
cases presented below, according to the 2 types of text to columns function. For the first one, please use
the database from chapter5 and copy the database into a new sheet called ‘Text to columns”. Copy the
column B, Date, into column K.
Select column K, press Tab, Text to columns, Fixed. Create separators for first 2 digits and second 2
digits, Finish. We will now have the month, day and year on 3 different column.

For the second way of delimiting the date cells, please use database from excel file
“EX_01_SalesCustomerDetails”. Copy the database into a new sheet and name it ‘Text to columns”. We
have the date on column B. Please copy it on column K and press Tab, Text to columns, delimited with.
You will see that the month, day and year are separated by “/”. Please set the delimiters as “/” by typing
this character and press finish. We have the same extract as above.
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If is blank
Please see database from file “if is blank database”. This is a simplified journal entries database, in which
we have the document number, posting date, document date and document header text on one line and the
accounts name, accounts number, amounts on different several lines below.

We will need to populate every single detail from the first line to every account below, meaning that
document number from cell B2, 1000178396, will need to be populated for every account in cell B3 and
B4.

Hint: Document number is present on column B. We need to copy all these documents numbers into
another column. Please insert a new column by selecting column B, right click, insert new column.
Document number will appear now on column C. Copy the document number from C2 into B2. We need
to set this first value for our further excel procedures. The if is blank formula will be created starting with
cell C3 below.

Basically, the translation into English of formula “if is blank” is: if you will find a blank cell in column C,
copy the value from the cell above, else, copy the value from column C.

Formula will look like: =IF(C3="",B2,C3)

The same principle should be applied for posting date, document date, and document header text.

Alt+Enter
There are cases where we need to input text in a single cell, but on different lines. If we edit a cell by
typping a text, press ALT+Enter, the cursor will move into next line, but on same cell. This is a better
alternative to be used instead of Wrap Text function.

Please see below example