Excel Friday: The gift your analysts didn't know they needed!

Excel Friday: The gift your analysts didn't know they needed - actually helpful functions!

I used to teach students a beautiful 5-step dance:
- Export data from internal system
- Filter for what you need
- Copy → paste to new sheet
- Repeat for next dataset
- Put it all together on one sheet

Even though it was layered with shortcuts and efficiencies, it was like wrapping presents with oven mitts. Sure, you'd eventually get there, but there has to be a better way.

Then Microsoft and Excel snuck in some updates like presents under the tree that nobody noticed until now:

Example #1 - Holiday sales across all regions
Old way: Filter each region → copy → paste → stack → repeat → wonder if you'll finish before New Year's

New hotness:
=VSTACK( FILTER(SalesData, SalesData[Month]="December"),
FILTER(OnlineOrders, OnlineOrders[Month]="December"),
FILTER(StoreRevenue, StoreRevenue[Month]="December"))

One formula pulls all your holiday sales data together. Updates automatically. No manual stacking required (unlike Thanksgiving leftovers.) 🤯

Here’s another one: Example #2 - Top 10 products this holiday season

- Sort by units sold, highlight top 10 gift items
- Copy → paste into your year-end report
- Pray 🙏nothing sells between now and your meeting

Now you can just use this:
=TAKE( SORTBY(Products, Products[UnitsSold], -1), 10)

Always shows your current bestsellers. Even when that last-minute gift rush hits on December 23rd.

The real story here:
Most teams are still working like it's 2015 because nobody told them Excel got its own upgrade (and we just need to get it done). The people who've figured this out? They're the ones actually enjoying their holiday parties 🥂 instead of just “finishing one quick thing."

Happy Friday (and Happy Holidays!)🎄🎅

P.S. — If your team is still in the copy-paste era, I cover stuff like this in our programs at Ascendant. Contact us and consider it a gift to your future self.