Manipulate data in excel

Basic data manipulation in Excel

• Identify duplicate records.
• Remove duplicate records.
• Manipulate database columns to match a target format.
• Populate blank data quality codes.
• Split up one field into several fields.
• Check for a middle initial.
• Strip out undesirable characters.
• Combine data elements that are stored across multiple columns into one column.

Steps to Manipulate Data

1. To begin, you’ll need a database, which is created from your data sources.
2. You then need to cleanse your data, with data manipulation, you can clean, rearrange and restructure data.
3. Next, import and build a database that you will work from.
4. You can combine, merge and delete information.

What is cell manipulation in Excel?

Manipulation of cells is entering and modifying the contents of the cells.

What is data manipulation tool?

Data manipulation tools allow you to modify data to make it easier to read or organize. These tools help identify patterns in your data that may otherwise not be obvious. For instance, you can arrange a data log in alphabetical order using a data manipulation tool so that discrete entries are easier to find.

How do you manipulate rows and columns in Excel?

To modify all rows or columns:

1. Locate and click the Select All button just below the name box to select every cell in the worksheet.
2. Position the mouse over a row line so the cursor becomes a double arrow.
3. Click and drag the mouse to increase or decrease the row height, then release the mouse when you are satisfied.

How do you manipulate a cell?

Optical manipulation of cells is enabled by a technique called optical trapping. This technique enables trapping of cells using a system consisting of a microscope with a high numerical aperture objective lens and a highly-focused laser beam, which exerts optical forces on cells or particles.

How do you manipulate columns in Excel?

Basic Manipulation

1. Inserting/Adding Columns – Simply select the column to the right of the column you wish to add, right click, and select “Insert”
2. Deleting Columns – This process can be handled simply by selecting the column that is not needed, right clicking and selecting “Delete”

Which one is manipulated of data?

The DML is used to manipulate data, which is a programming language. It short for Data Manipulation Language that helps to modify data like adding, removing, and altering databases. It means that changing the information in a way that can be read easily.

How do I massage data in Excel?

Step 2: Formatting SSN

1. Select the range A2:A10 where the data is stored.
2. Bring up the Format Cells dialog (CTRL + 1)
3. On the Number tab, click on the Custom category.
4. In the Type field, enter this string: 000-00-0000.
5. Click OK.

What is referencing in Excel?

In Microsoft Excel, cell referencing is the method by which you refer to a cell or series of cells in a formula. Cell referencing is not important unless you plan to copy the formula to a number of other cells.

What is editing worksheet?

You edit a worksheet to change the way that the worksheet looks or behaves. For example, you might want to change the layout of worksheet data, or add calculations, percentages, or totals.Choose Edit | Worksheet… to display the “Edit Worksheet dialog”.

How do I change the size of a cell in Excel?

Set a column to a specific width

1. Select the column or columns that you want to change.
2. On the Home tab, in the Cells group, click Format.
3. Under Cell Size, click Column Width.
4. In the Column width box, type the value that you want.
5. Click OK.

What is the shortcut key to edit a cell in Excel?

F2
First, the keyboard shortcut for editing a cell is F2 on Windows, and Control + U on a Mac. With Excel’s default settings, this will put your cursor directly in the cell, ready to edit.

How do you modify the chart so the owner draw data series?

Modify the chart so the Owner Draw data series is plotted along the.. On the Charts Tools Design tab, in the Type group, click the Change Chart Type button. IN the Change Chart Type dialog, click the Secondary Axis check box next to the Owner Draw series. Insert a sunburst chart based on the selected cells.

How do I make Excel cells expand to fit text?

Select the excel cell that you want to expand to fit the text size. Click Home —> Format —> AutoFit Row Height / AutoFit Column Width menu item to expand it.

How do I edit a spreadsheet?

Edit data in a cell

1. Open a spreadsheet in the Google Sheets app.
2. In your spreadsheet, double-tap the cell you want to edit.
3. Enter your data.
4. Optional: To format text, touch and hold the text, then choose an option.
5. When done, tap Done .

What is data manipulation in ML?

Data Manipulation Meaning: Manipulation of data is the process of manipulating or changing information to make it more organized and readable.

How do I clean up messy data in Excel?

Here’s a list of Top 10 Super Neat Ways to Clean Data in Excel as follows.

1. Get Rid of Extra Spaces:
2. Select & Treat all blank cells:
3. Convert Numbers Stored as Text into Numbers:
4. Remove Duplicates:
5. Highlight Errors:
6. Change Text to Lower/Upper/Proper Case:
7. Parse Data Using Text to Column:

How do you massage data?

Data Massaging Best Practices

1. Create a Data Quality Plan. The first step is to set clear expectations for your data and to create data quality KPIs based on specific business rules.
2. Structure Data at the Entry Point.
3. Validate Data Accuracy.
4. Remove Duplicates.
5. Append Data.

What are the 3 types of cell references in Excel?

Relative, Absolute and Mixed
A key element of a formula is the cell reference, and there are three types: Relative. Absolute. Mixed.

How does a Vlookup work?

The VLOOKUP function performs a vertical lookup by searching for a value in the first column of a table and returning the value in the same row in the index_number position. The VLOOKUP function is a built-in function in Excel that is categorized as a Lookup/Reference Function.

February 26, 2020
4.9K views

Learning techniques in Excel data manipulation can save time and lessen your stress at work. If you are one of those people who wish to enhance their skills in Excel, then you are in the right place.

In this article, you will learn some beneficial tips in manipulating data in your spreadsheet. Whether you are a business owner, freelancer, or an employee, these tips can make your life easier if you take time to learn it. Continue reading and check out the following tips.

Helpful Tools in Data Manipulation

Basic Tools

• Freezing Panes

Excel’s freezing panes allows you to lock specific rows so you can still see them even when you are scrolling. It works both for columns and rows.

You must take note that under the Freezing Panes command, you can choose the “Freeze First Column” or “Freeze Top Row” if you want to keep the leftmost column/row visible when you scroll. Aside from allowing you to compare different columns or rows in a long spreadsheet, the Freezing Panes command also keeps the essential details in view.

How to Freeze Rows or Columns in Excel?

Step 1. Select the row below the row or rows that you want to keep visible. If you prefer to freeze columns, you must select the cell to the right of the column that you want to freeze.

Step 2. Go to the View tab.

Step 3. Select the Freeze Pane dropdown and choose “Freeze Panes.”

You can use this video as your guide in freezing your row or column:

Sorting Data

Sorting your data helps you to reorganize your spreadsheet quickly. For instance, you can sort your list of products by its suppliers. You can also sort it numerically, alphabetically, and in many other ways.

Before sorting the data, you must first decide if you want to sort the entire spreadsheet or just a particular column.

Sort sheet

Sort sheet allows you to organize all of your data based on one column. Related information across each row is remained after the sortation. It is the best one for you if you want to arrange your data alphabetically or alphanumerically.

Sort range

Sort range is ideal for a sheet with several tables. It sorts the data in a variety of cells without affecting the other content on the worksheet.

How to sort a sheet?

Step 1. Select the cell in the column that you want to sort.

Step 2. Click the data table, choose the Sort 7 Filter group, and do the following:

To sort in ascending order, click the A-Z button

To sort in descending order, click the Z-A button in descending order.

You must not forget to check if all data is sorted as text. If you want to sort a column that contains numbers, you can format them either number or text. You can choose your sorting option in the Format Cells dialog, click the Category dropdown and select your preferred sorting option.

You can use this video as your guide in sorting your data:

Function Tools

Here are some of the essential functions or formulas in manipulating data.

IF Statements

If statements are useful for several situations. It can save your time and output a text if a particular data is valid or false. For instance, you can write the function =IF(A1>A2, “EXCELLENT”, “FAIL”), where A1>A2 is the case, “EXCELLENT” is the output if true and “FAIL” is the output if false.

SUMIF, COUNTIF, AVERAGEIF

All of these functions or formulas are structured like =FUNCTION(range, criteria, function range). So in SUM, you can put =SUM(A1:A10, “EXCELLENT”, B1:B10). This function will automatically add the values of B1 to B10 if the total sum of A1 to A10 has an output of “EXCELLENT”. You may be starting to think that these functions can make your complex spreadsheets easier.

MAX and MIN

These functions may be simple, but they are sure to help a lot when you have a massive amount of data. For example, you can put =MAX(A1:A10)if you want to get the maximum numerical value in those rows while you can use MIN to find the minimum.

AND

AND is one of the widely-used logical functions in Excel. It automatically checks if certain things are true or false. For instance, =AND(A1=”EXCELLENT”, B3>10) would output true if A1 is “EXCELLENT” and the value of B3 is greater than 10. You can add more value by simply adding another comma per value.

Other Excel functions that you must know:

Auto Filter

AutoFilter is one of the effective ways to find your data faster. Excel has several filter options that you can use to subset the information on your spreadsheet

The categories are:

How to apply the AutoFilter?

Step 1. First, click the range of cells that you want to filter.

Step 2. Click the Data tab and select the Filter option

The dropdown menu will be visible on each of your header cells. It can be used to display specific rows for a particular category.

VLOOKUP Function

You can you VLOOKUP to search and retrieve data from a particular column in the table. It supports exact, approximate, and even wildcards. The letter “V” stands for “vertical”. It helps you to search through your data while basing on your unique identifier.

Here is an example of the VLOOKUP function:

What are the things to remember in using VLOOKUP?

1. The VLOOKUP function can only search in the leftmost column of a table and returns a value from a column to the right. This function cannot look at its left. If you need to look for values from the left, you can use the INDEX MATCH combination since it does not care about lookup positions and return columns.
2. The VLOOKUP function is case-insensitive. Therefore, both lowercase and uppercase characters are treated equally. If you want to distinguish data with case sensitivity, you can you the VLOOKUP case sensitive formulas.
3. Remember the importance of TRUE and FALSE in the last parameter. You must use FALSE if you are looking for the exact match while TRUE for the approximate match.

Removing Duplicate Rows

Excel has an impressive job in removing duplicate in our spreadsheets. To clear all the copies, you can click the Data tab and choose the Remove Duplicates button. Leave all the checkboxes selected, so all copies are successfully removed.

Microsoft Excel is a powerful tool that can be used for data manipulation. To make the most of the software, you need to use VBA. Visual Basic for Applications, or VBA, allows Excel users to create macros, which are powerful time-saving custom functions for data manipulation and analysis. Macros process VBA code to manage large data sets that would otherwise take a lot of time to modify.

VBA example script used in Excel

Sub ConfigureLogic()
Dim qstEntries
Dim dqstEntries
Dim qstCnt, dqstCnt
qstEntries = Range("QualifiedEntry").Count
qst = qstEntries - WorksheetFunction.CountIf(Range("QualifiedEntry"), "")
ReDim QualifiedEntryText(qst)
'MsgBox (qst)
dqstEntries = Range("DisQualifiedEntry").Count
dqst = dqstEntries - WorksheetFunction.CountIf(Range("DisQualifiedEntry"), "")
ReDim DisqualifiedEntryText(dqst)
'MsgBox (dqst)
For qstCnt = 1 To qst
QualifiedEntryText(qstCnt) = ThisWorkbook.Worksheets("Qualifiers").Range("J" & 8 + qstCnt).value
    'MsgBox (QualifiedEntryText(qstCnt))
    logging ("Configured Qualified Entry entry #" & qstCnt & " as {" & QualifiedEntryText(qstCnt) & "}")
Next
For dqstCnt = 1 To dqst
DisqualifiedEntryText(dqstCnt) = ThisWorkbook.Worksheets("Qualifiers").Range("M" & 8 + dqstCnt).value
   'MsgBox (DisqualifiedEntryText(dqstCnt))
   logging ("Configured DisQualified Entry entry #" & qstCnt & " as {" & DisqualifiedEntryText(dqstCnt) & "}")
Next
includeEntry = ThisWorkbook.Worksheets("Qualifiers").Range("IncludeSibling").value
    'MsgBox (includeEntry)
    logging ("Entrys included in search - " & includeEntry)
End Sub

How to analyze and manipulate entries in a spreadsheet?

To use VBA for data analysis, you will need to check the settings in Excel for the Developer tool. To find it, locate the Excel Ribbon and search for the Developer tab. You will need to activate it in the Excel Settings menu if it is not displayed.

Next, create a new worksheet and name it «Qualifiers.» We will use this sheet to check for everything that qualify the selections.

Next, set up the qualifiers on the sheet according to the code. It must be entered manually; cut and paste will not work.

ThisWorkbook.Worksheets("Qualifiers").Range("J" & 8 + qstCnt).value

How to locate the range and construct an array?

The range in the function above is cell J9. The range function notes an 8; however, the actual range is 9 because:

For qstCnt = 1 To qst

The above statement starts at 1, not 0. Therefore, the list starts at 9. In this case, note (qstCnt=1).

To construct an array out of entries on the Qualifiers worksheet, place random words in cells J9-J13. Once the rows are completed, we can move forward with finding and manipulating data in Excel.

Private Sub CountSheets()
Dim sheetcount
Dim WS As Worksheet
sheetcount = 0
logging ("*****Starting Scrub*********")
For Each WS In ThisWorkbook.Worksheets
    sheetcount = sheetcount + 1
If WS.Name = "Selected" Then
                                'need to log the date and time into sheet named "Logging"
                                ActionCnt = ActionCnt + 1
                                logging ("Calling sheet: " & WS.Name)
                                scrubsheet (sheetcount)
                                Else
                                ActionCnt = ActionCnt + 1
                                logging ("Skipped over sheet: " & WS.Name)
                                End If
Next WS
'MsgBox ("ending")
ActionCnt = ActionCnt + 1
logging ("****Scrub DONE!")
Application.ScreenUpdating = True
End Sub

There is an example of a working tab counter.

Dim sheetcount
Dim WS As Worksheet
sheetcount = 0
logging ("*****Starting Scrub*********")
For Each WS In ThisWorkbook.Worksheets
    sheetcount = sheetcount + 1

After initialising the sheet count, set it to 0 in order to restart the counter.

Logging() is another subroutine that keeps track of all actions in order to audit selections.

The next For loop sets up the Active Workbook for counting. WS is the initialised and ThisWorkbook. Worksheets is the active tab in the book. Since we have not named the workbook, this module will run on any active workbook. If you are working on multiple workbooks and have the wrong one activated, it will attempt to run on it. To avoid errors, take precautions to name your specific workbook or only work on one at a time.

Every time the loop fires, it adds one variable to the sheet count to keep track of the number of tabs. Then we move to:

If WS.Name = "Selected" Then
                                'need to log the date and time into sheet named "Logging"
                                ActionCnt = ActionCnt + 1
                                logging ("Calling sheet: " & WS.Name)
                                scrubsheet (sheetcount)
                                Else
                                ActionCnt = ActionCnt + 1
                                logging ("Skipped over sheet: " & WS.Name)
                                End If

Here, we look for the Selected tab.

If the variable WS equals Selected, we log it and fire the subroutine Scrub Sheet. If the variable WS is not equal to Selected, it is logged that that sheet was skipped and the action is counted. The above code is an example of how to count the number of and locate a particular tab.

The following list is all of the different methods that can be used to manipulate data!

Have FUN!

How to count the number of sheets in a workbook?

 Dim TAB
                For Each TAB In ThisWorkbook.Worksheets
                'some routine here
                next

How to find the last row, column, or cell on a worksheet?

Dim cellcount
                cellcount = Cells(ThisWorkbook.Worksheets("worksheet").Rows.Count, 1).End(xlUp).Row

How to filter by using advanced criteria?

 Range("A2:Z99").Sort key1:=Range("A5"), order1:=xlAscending, Header:=xlNo

How to apply auto-fit property to a column?

Columns("A:A").EntireColumn.AutoFit

How to get values from another worksheet?

 dim newvalue
                newvalue = ThisWorkbook.Worksheets("worksheet").Range("F1").value

How to insert a column into a worksheet?

Dim Row, Column
                Cells(Row, Column).EntireColumn.Select
                Selection.Insert

How to insert multiple columns into a worksheet?

 Dim insertCnt
                                Dim Row, Column
                                For insertCnt = 1 To N
               ThisWorkbook.Worksheets("worksheet").Select
               Cells(Row, Column).EntireColumn.Select
               Selection.Insert
               Next

How to add a named range to a particular sheet?

 ThisWorkbook.Worksheets("worksheet").Names.Add Name:="Status", RefersToR1C1:="=worksheet!C2"
 

How to insert an entire row into a worksheet?

Dim Row, Column
                                Cells(Row, Column).EntireRow.Select
               Selection.Insert

How to copy an entire row for pasting?

ActiveSheet.Range("A1").EntireRow.Select
                                Selection.Copy

How to delete an entire row?

ActiveSheet.Range("A1").EntireRow.Select
                                Selection.Delete

How to select a particular sheet?

 ThisWorkbook.Worksheets("worksheet").Select

How to compare values of a range?

                                Dim firstrange
                                Dim Logictest
                                Logictest = "some word or value"
                                If (Range(firstrange).value = Logictest) then
                                'some routine here
                                End If

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