PDF2XL is 4 Years Old!

Dear Friends,

This month Cogniview is celebrating the 4th Birthday of PDF2XL – our flagship PDF to Excel conversion product.

It’s not that we always had PDF2XL. You see, Cogniview started as an Enterprise software company that aimed to sell its Enterprise-Level software products to IT departments in large organizations.

We spent a lot of money on flamboyant marketing campaigns, well-dressed sales people and a variety of other time/money wasters.

After 4 years of struggles that resulted in a huge hole in our bank account, we woke up and realized we had to survive. So we turned to our customers who said: Make us a decent PDF to Excel converter – and that was how PDF2XL was born.

Since then, PDF2XL licenses were bought by more than 15,000 companies in a variety of industries all over the globe.

We are thankful to our customers, our employees, our partners and our blog readers who have contributed their time, energy and resources to help Cogniview achieve so many successes.

So, let the party begin!

And what’s a party without party gifts?

First a special Excel Productivity Guide that can help you save even more time when working with Excel.

Click here to Download the Excel Productivity Guide

PLUS…

We would be overjoyed if you would consider leaving PDF2XL a birthday greeting as a comment on this Blog post. The best 10 greetings will entitle their authors with a $15 Amazon Gift Card.

The best part is that the best greeting out of the top 10 will also win a Flip Mino camera!

Amazon Gift Card Camera

So, we invite you to share your thoughts with us by leaving a comment on this post.

And once again – thank you!

Yoav Ezer, CEO
Cogniview Systems 2002

Excel Productivity Video

This is the first video from Cogniview’s Excel productivity training.

In my opinion, the approach outlined in this video is the cornerstone of productivity (Whether you are an Excel user or not). I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments.

Part I

Part II

Excel Data Mining: Measuring Customer Support Costs

This entry is part 3 of 3 in the series Excel Customer Data Mining

In this series we have already looked at Recency, Frequency and Monetary value as metrics for data mining and ranking your customers in Excel. RFM will tell you who the most rewarding customers are, but it will not tell you who is most-likely to be a tough customer, nor will it tell you how expensive those customers are.

To work out these additional factors, you need to record more data, and that is what I will reveal in this article.

Customer acquisition costs are familiar to any business but many companies do not track individual customers support costs and instead see customer service as an aggregated expense. This is a mistake because certain customers could be costing you more money than they bring in, meaning gaining more of these customers would actually hurt your business rather than help it. Another reason why “make it up in volume” is often a bad approach!

Depending on your systems you might be able to record support incidents either by counting “tickets”, or you might even be able to record time spent. Again, just like with the customer value, you want to use recency and frequency, although in this case high recency and frequency are “bad”!

What would you use instead of monetary value or margin? Well, in some cases you can place a cost on the total support a customer required. It’s not just a factor of time, although that is a cost worth recording, but also there may be additional expenses incurred such as travel, postage, returns, waste, custom work or additional purchases. A customer who demands you turn up at their offices hundreds of miles away with a brand new custom widget is going to be more of a financial burden than one who sends one email and receives a stock answer.

Along with customer ID, you will want to record the type of customer or the product/service the support was against. If customers have multiple products then do the exercise against customer initially but also run through another process for product or service.

Often, but not always, you will find the customers with the best RFM scores are also those who cost you least in customer support. The top 20% really are your best customers overall. Over and over the customers who pay you least are also the ones who cause you the most bother. Of course there is always the high-roller exception who is just demanding because, well, they can.

A friend around the millenium had a software product with service levels. Together we turned the business from a net loss into a hugely profitable company by first systemizing customer service, and then by removing the bottom rung of the offering entirely. We found the cheap product attracted customers who were both more likely to circumvent the copy protection, but also generated the bulk of the distractions in the form of groundless complaints, returns, support problems and bad PR.

You do not need fancy systems to keep this information. Using Excel you can record your customer service data very easily. Just make sure you record at least:

You might well have suggestions or requirements for additional data, but essentially you want to know what the problem was, the cure, how long you spent solving and who for.

Once you have your data you can see if there is a way to make these problems go away, perhaps the issue is with documentation or customer expectations rather than product quality. If the problems can’t go away entirely, you can then work on making your customer service as easy as possible, with stock responses, procedures, and other systems. Of course failing all that, you are left with dropping the product, customer (or type of customer) or raising prices.

Bottom line, without data you would only be guessing. So long as you have actionable information then you can actually make some decisions. If you are not recording support information, you had better get started!

How to Use Excel to Identify Your Best Customers

This entry is part 2 of 3 in the series Excel Customer Data Mining

In the previous article I showed how you can measure visitor value and engagement using Excel. Now I would like to show you how you can identify your best, most profitable customers, also using Excel.

Now immediately you might think it is obvious who your most profitable customer is. Isn’t it the one who spends the most?

No!

First, someone could buy your biggest ticket item and then go away never to return. Are they a better customer than one who buys a smaller item each month? This is why we need to look at the data!

We also need to remind ourselves that revenue is not the same as profit. We will get into working out profitable from unprofitable customers and/or product later.

Customers can often talk up their future spending plans which can turn a sales persons head. Ideally what we want to discover who has shown good customer evidence through their actions and an evidence-based prediction of propensity to buy in future.

For simplicity sake in these examples I will be using revenue because I don’t want to distract you from the valuable knowledge that you can gain by getting involved in just getting hold of some of this data. If you have profit data then wherever you see revenue or spend, substitute that with profit or margin.

Discover Your RFM

The technique I am showing you here is called RFM Analysis. RFM stands for

Each of these measures is an important indicator of how good a customer they are, but together you get a potent scoring metric that can tell you a great deal about where (or who) your profit is coming from.

Set Up Your Customer List

If you use a fully-featured ecommerce or CRM system then this information might be readily available to export or in reports. Otherwise you need to talk to your tame techie or do some inputting. For this example I set up a spreadsheet to simulate the output from a shopping cart system.

I then copied the cells and pasted into a new sheet using “Paste Special” as I only wanted the values, not the formulas, just in case it recalculated as I worked with the data.

This gave me 100 “customers” with associated purchase activity.

Now we need to “score” them!

Essentially scoring your customers is as easy as sorting and adding some additional numbers:

  1. Sort by “Last Purchase” descending.
  2. Add a column marked “R” and give the top 20% a score of 5, the next 4, and so on. (Do not use a formula, just copy and paste).
  3. Copy the column of scores so you can paste in the next steps.
  4. Add columns for “F” and “M”.
  5. Sort by “Purchases” descending, score in “F” (paste the scores), then sort by “Total Spend” descending and place the “M” scores.
  6. Now when you sort the spreadsheet back to ordered by “Customer” you will see each customer has the appropriate values for Recency, Frequency and Monetary Value. All we need to do is add those numbers together to get their RFM scores.
  7. Create a new column marked RFM and add up their R+F+M using something like the formula =E2+F2+G2 and paste that in for each customer row.
  8. Now you should be able to sort by the RFM column descending to get the people with the highest score at the top.

Take a look at the top of your results.

Those at the top have spent a lot, recently and often. Your best customers.

Now look at the bottom.

These folks might have spent a lot, but a year ago and not bought anything since, or perhaps made one small purchase more recently. As you can see further up, small purchases made often can make a brilliant customer, and we would want to attract more of them if we can service them without too much hassle and cost.

Using these Results

If you do nothing else, it is a good idea to split the list up into Quintiles/Fifths, the top 20% are your Gold Customers, the next Silver, then Bronze. The next 20-40% of your customers need looking at to learn where you have gone wrong.

Already we have data that can provide us insights.

We have identified two types of customer that just looking at revenue wouldn’t have revealed. High ticket customers who go away, and new, low ticket customers. Those latter type might turn into brilliant customers but it is too early to tell, but they will not grow into top customers without our attention. The former type of customer likely went away because of either poor customer service or because of some other bad experience – ie, we dropped the ball.

If we only looked at $ we would have thought the former were fine and might have considered latter not worthy of much attention compared to the high-rollers!

In the next part of this series we will look at two additional metrics that can tell you a great deal about how profitable these customers really are, Engagement and Support.

Introduction to Using Excel to Calculate Your Website Visitor Value Metrics

This entry is part 1 of 3 in the series Excel Customer Data Mining

Do you know how much each visitor to your website is worth? If you buy advertising, do you know how much money you can spend and still break even? Do you know the long term value of your visitors?

We all want as many visitors as possible to our websites, it almost seems like crazy talk to imply otherwise, but in actual fact for a business website, some visitors are more valuable than others, and some visitors could be even costing you money.

Knowing your average visitor value is therefore essential, and breaking visitor value down further could be a very profitable thing to do.

Even more important is if you are paying for this traffic. You want every spend on your web marketing to work as hard as possible, both to know how much you can invest, and also to trim the fat.

There are custom and commercial tools out there, but in fact, you can do a lot with plain old Microsoft Excel!

Using Excel for Basic Visitor Value

First you need to know how many visitors you get each month, and how much money your website makes.

Do you sell products or services? Maybe you show advertising?

Take your monthly visitors and sales total and plug these numbers into the spreadsheet. In the final column the revenue is divided by the visitors to give your visitor value.

So in this example, 30,000 visitors bringing in a revenue of $10,000 provides an average visitor value of $0.33.

How is this useful? Well, with this in mind, if you are currently paying $0.25 per click in Google Adwords then you can up it and still break even.

Drilling Down Visitor Value

This is not really fair though. As I say in the introduction, not every traffic source is created equal.

Say, for example, you notify your audience about a product in three ways:

  1. Blog Feed
  2. Email
  3. Twitter

In the example shown, Email generates the most revenue, with feed coming second, and Twitter looking pathetic at only $20, BUT, look at the per-visitor value!

This is because the Twitter message converted at a much higher rate, that is a higher percentage of Twitter visitors bought. We will look at conversions in a moment. For now just know the message and channel can have a profound impact on visitor value, even a negative effect, as well as the total revenue where email clearly wins in this case.

Responsives Versus Subscribers

The obvious conclusion you would draw from the above example is “wow, I had better grow my Twitter followers”, but WAIT!

Yes, there is an indication that those Twitter clickers are worth $6.67 on average, but it does not tell you how much your Twitter followers are worth! At this point you just know how much your responsive followers are worth from one test.

To know how responsive your various fans are, we can check the Click Through Rate, or CTR.

CTR is calculated by setting the cell format as percentage using the % button, then taking the visitors and dividing it by the total messages sent (if you have 300 followers then one tweet is sent to 300 people, but if you send it twice then the number of messages sent doubles).

In my case here the formula is =(C7/B7) (where / means divide).

These results can give you additional insights. You can see Feed subscribers are incredibly responsive – a full half clicked through, were as email and twitter followers were not in the same league.

You can not take the results from just one sample too seriously. You need to measure repeatedly for a start. Secondly, if you have 10 followers in total and 3 clicked through, then your click and conversion rates seem high, but we could be dealing with too small numbers to know if your results are statistically significant.

Statistical relevance is too much math for my meager brain, but there are spreadsheets available that will help you do the calculations.

What you do know is that if you can get more of your followers, subscribers or readers to respond, then you will increase their value to you, and while some sources are less responsive than others, their propensity to buy can be very different … that is where conversion rates come in.

Measuring Conversions

Using a tool such as Google Analytics you can automatically measure conversions using “Goals”, but you can do some broad calculations using Excel of course.

Taking the example given above, we can add another couple of columns to reveal a better picture of what went on with that promotion.

Conversions are calculated much like CTR, but CR is percentage of visitors who buy, therefore Sales divided by Visitors presented as percentage format.

So in our example you can see that while this particular sites Feed readers are highly responsive, they are clickers not buyers, whereas this site owner has a small amount of raving fans who were primed to buy following on Twitter.

Why might this be? Well, Twitter is often used for conversation. There might have been many messages leading up to the offer being made preparing those who were interested that something special was going on sale, or perhaps an existing product heavily discounted. The Twitter and email recipients might have been hovering over their keyboard ready, while the blog readers while still interested left it too late and clicked over after the offer had gone away!

Going for Gold

So now we know that not all visitors are equal, but what about customers? Earlier I said that some visitors or customers could in fact be costing you money, how do we know? And what about the long term value?

In the next part of this series I will show you how to split your customers into groups for increased profitability and so you know who to lavish your super special customer service on! We will later also work out who are the best customers long term, and who you might want to stop buying from you.

Subscribe so you don’t miss anything!

Got Microsoft Excel Questions?

Our Excel cheat sheet seems to have been a hit with readers so far. If you haven’t grabbed it yet, you can still download it for free.

So many people told me that they struggle and fight with Excel I thought I would offer you the opportunity to decide what should go in the next one! I will do my hardest to get answers for all the best or most popular questions.

Just add your suggestion, question, idea or problem in the comments.

Also if you particularly like a suggestion anyone else makes, just point it out in the comments too!

We have Excel experts on hand to supply me with the answers, so get asking your Excel questions in the comments :)

Free Microsoft Excel Cheat Sheet to Download and Print

I don’t use Excel very often so when I do I have to remember or research all the keyboard shortcuts and functions that I normally use, even the most basic ones.

Rather than keep writing and losing post-it stickies I thought I would put this cheat sheet together, and because I figured I wouldn’t be alone in this, I thought I would share it with you too.

This cheat sheet shows the major keyboard shortcuts and a list of useful formula functions. Stick it up near your monitor so you will never need to Google that keyboard shortcut again!

Download the Free Excel Cheat Sheet

Excel Design Tips – Make Your Excel Spreadsheets Look Good

This entry is part 1 of 2 in the series Excel Design Tips

Excel Design

Excel is a powerful numbers tool, no question. Most of the time when we talk about spreadsheets we are focusing on the mathematical side, rather than how the results look.

Thing is, spreadsheets are a tool for creating content to be read also. In fact, I would go as far as to say a spreadsheet is an influential tool of persuasion, when used correctly.

On top of that, many business rely on Excel for their business forms, such as invoices, expenses, time sheets and all kinds of paperwork.

It is possible to not only have your spreadsheets make you more productive, but also look good.

In this series I want to show you how you can beautify your spreadsheets without requiring any real design skills.

Formatting Reports With Spreadsheets

Although the features available in the latest software surpass anything that came before, this use of spreadsheets is not a new thing, can you remember the old Lotus 123 and Supercalc days?

Even back then, spreadsheets were used to make data more presentable, more professional, and less, well, like it had come straight off a music-ruled dotmatrix report, which was often the main alternative.

Of course back then a lot of the data was retyped, causing inevitable transcription errors. Now Excel can read in data exported from numerous systems natively, and also understand common open formats, even down to interrogating live databases directly through ODBC.

So this is not just about spreadsheets you create form scratch, Excels presentation abilities can help you with presenting any kind of data that Excel can import.

Things have come a long way. In the past you were pretty much restricted to having lines, boxes, bold and italic. If you were lucky. Now Excel has features only previously found in desk top publishing packages.

Excel’s graphic features are both a blessing and a curse.

Yes, you have a huge amount of freedom and functionality to create the look you want, but the downside is a lot of people over use these features and make their spreadsheets look like a Nascar, and reports appear to be a page from a comic book.

Let’s focus on some basics!

10 Tips for Avoiding Excel Formatting Horrors

Excel Design Tip 1: Less is More

When working with the formatting and design features of Excel please do not treat it like a kid in a candy store!

Restraint is important if you want to provide the best possible result.

Excel Design Tip 2: Comic Sans has no place in business

Sometimes I wish I could build a time machine so I could go back to whichever lunatic was presiding over the meeting when Microsoft decided to bundle Comic Sans with their operating system and give them a sound thrashing.

Ahem.

If there is one thing that will reduce the professionalism of your spreadsheet it is the inclusion of any kind of comic font, but in particular Comic Sans. Just don’t.

Excel Design Tip 3: WordArt can kill your design

WordArt is a nice and flexible feature that has been an addition of Office for years. Many people are comfortable with it. But does it ever look cheesy! Just look at the header image of this article – geeky, no?

You know where we agreed restraint was important a few paragraphs ago? That goes one hundred fold for when using WordArt. In fact, if in doubt, leave it out!

Excel Design Tip 4: Clipart Clichés

Photography or illustration can bring a page to life and stop it being a sea of text and numbers, but if the clipart looks over-used, out of place, hackneyed or just plain BAD, then you are only doing damage. I would recommend instead of the default clipart to look to outside sources such as Istockphoto, but there is a similar risk in using those also!

Excel Design Tip 5:  Careful with colors

Color is essential in aiding clarity of your data, providing of course you are going to view the spreadsheet on screen or your printer can output color. What often happens though is people get carried away and the end Invoice in excelresult is a rainbow mess of clashing, garish, neon. Excel is not the best at allowing color flexibility, so make the best of a bad set of colors by selecting muted tones that go well together, such as grays and blues.

Excel Design Tip 6: Templates are your friend

Rather than starting from scratch, especially if you are design challenged like me, consider trying one of the many freely available pre-built templates out there. You can find everything from invoices to timesheets. There is a great list in our Excel Wizardry article.

Excel Design Tip 7: Use grid lines selectively

Just because you are working in a spreadsheet does not mean you have to show your grid lines. In many cases it is easier to only add the lines that aid legibility, and switch off all othes. In Windows you can find the option to turn off gridlines in the view tab, or in older versions tools, options. In Mac, look in the preferences.

Excel Design Tip 8: Background images can lift or distract

A tasteful background image can work well. Unfortunately all too often the images used are busy, detailed and when combined with columns of numbers, just make your eyes water. Go for something plain and delicate, such as a subtle graduated tint or a slight drop shadow..

Excel background images

Excel Design Tip 9: Align your text

Another legibility tip is for you to not just accept Excels defaults when working with your text. For example did you know you can format your cells and select to align your text at the top and to wrap around?

Excel Design Tip 10: Use appropriate font sizes

Your basic font needs to be large enough to be legible without an electron microscope, plain enough to read (step away from the “handwriting” font!), and there should be a clear visual hierarchy. What do I mean by that? While most people in their wordprocessor will use headlines and subheads, for some reason fewer people think to do this in a spreadsheet, but breaking up a report in this way can really help get your point across. So if you are using 10-12 point body text you might make your subhead 14-16pt and your main headline 18pt.

Summary

Yes, much of this will be seemingly obvious, but if you go into any Excel using business I guarantee at least one and probably more of these excel formatting crimes are being committed right now.


Got Excel design tips? Please share in the comments, and look out for part 2 of this series!

The Excel Magician: 70+ Excel Tips and Shortcuts to help you make Excel Magic

Are you working with Excel and want take your Excel skills to the next level? Or do you want to learn Excel and don’t know where to start? Check out these 70+ tips and shortcuts that will help you make Excel Magic.

Online tutorials & videos

The following online tutorials are mostly free and will teach you quite a bit about Excel. In fact they are better than some of the expensive classroom training courses.

  1. Online introduction to Excel: If you are just starting to use excel, this is the perfect resource for you. Here you will find dozens of audio courses that take a step by step approach to learning excel.
  2. DataPig Technologies: The guys from Data Pig Technologies made a comprehensive collection of videos that explain almost every aspect of Excel. From basic Excel concepts to VBA programming. And most of the videos are free!
  3. Online Charts Tutorial: Jon Peltier is an Excel-charting superstar. You can use his online tutorial to get you started on Excel charting and also as a reference.
  4. Basic Formulas Guide: This excellent tutorial will help you master Excel formulas in no time.
  5. Common uses for Formulas: This collection of samples will help you understand what can be achieved by using excel formulas.
  6. An introduction to Pivot Tables: The Pivot Table is an amazing tool, but people often shy away from it because Pivot Tables seem complicated. The first page of this PDF contains a clear description of Pivot Tables and how they can be used.
  7. Creating a Pivot table: A 7-minute video shows you how to create and work with Pivot Tables.
  8. Pivot Tables in Excel 2007: Excel 2007 Pivot Tables are much easier to use. If you use excel 2007, check out this slightly promotional yet excellent introduction to Pivot Tables.
  9. Practicing Pivot Tables: This step by step tutorial from Microsoft will help you sharpen your Pivot Table skills.
  10. Microsoft Excel help / 2007: When all else fails, Microsoft Excel Help is a good source to try.

Books

In order to harness the full power of Excel, shell out a couple of book bucks. The following books are packed with information and real-world know-how.

General Excel Books

  1. Excel Bible 2003 / 2007 version: The “Excel Bible” was written by the renowned Excel expert, John Walkenbach. It explains everything from basic formulas and functions to data validation, and Excel programming. If you have only $30 to spend on Excel training, buy this book.
  2. Excel Charts: This book is a comprehensive, yet easy to understand, guide to Excel charting. It’s a useful resource for both beginner and experienced excel users.
  3. Excel Formulas: Formulas are the lifeblood of spreadsheets and “Excel Formulas” from John Walkenbach will teach you everything about them. This book covers all things formula, from custom worksheet functions to financials formulas and more.
  4. Pivot Tables and data analysis / 2007 version: One of the most useful yet most feared features in Excel – the Pivot Table, is tackled gracefully by Bill Jelen (aka Mr. Excel) and Michael Alexander. Well worth the read.
  5. Excel Programming: By far, the best guide to Excel programming. The book also outlines a programming methodology for Excel. The only downside to this book is that it assumes a bit of programming knowledge.
  6. Report programming with Excel: If you plan to build a reporting system based on excel, this is the book for you. It shows how to use Excel to build a reporting/data analysis environment and shows how to properly work with SQL databases.

Excel Tips and case studies

  1. Excel case studies: While not for the beginner, this book contains valuable, real-world advice on how to make Fxcel do what you want it to do. Make sure you check out the “Making things look good” chapter.
  2. Excel Tips: A highly recommended Excel tip book from Mr. Spreadsheet himself.
  3. Some more Excel Tips: A compendium of Excel tips. This is not the first book you should own, but I often find that I return to this book when I’m stuck.
  4. This isn’t Excel it’s Magic: Bob Umlas is probably the foremost expert on formulas. The things this guy does with formulas will make your hair stand on end. If you are serious about Excel, than buy this book.

Specialized Excel books

  1. Principals of finance with Excel: This highly recommended book will help you understand the applicability of Excel in financial environments. It is loaded with real world examples and can help both the financial expert and the techie.
  2. Statistical Analysis with Excel: Using plain English and real-life examples, this book provides information that helps with statistical analysis. The book covers samples and normal distributions, probabilities and related distributions, trends and correlations, as well as statistical terms like median vs. mean, margin of error, standard deviation, permutations, and correlations.
  3. Business Analysis with Excel: Running a business is complicated. Understanding issues like cost of goods, inventory, sales forecast, tax statements is crucial to success. Business analysis with Excel explains these issues and shows how to tackle them using Excel.
  4. Sales Forecasting with Excel: This book shows you how to use Microsoft Excel, to predict trends and future sales based on—numbers. Use data about the past to forecast the future. Excel provides all sorts of tools to help you do that, and this book shows you how to use them.
  5. Excel for Chemists: While most of this book is a general introduction to Excel, it is filled with Chemistry oriented examples. The book also contains a complete chapter that shows how Excel can assist chemists in research.

Forums, News Groups and Mailing Lists

No matter how tough or silly your question is, the experts in the following sites/mailing lists will answer it. They will do it for free and usually within a couple of hours. Don’t be shy. Join these communities and ask.

Note: The online Excel community is one of the nicest communities that I have ever had the pleasure of joining.

  1. Mailing Lists: Wow. This is the jackpot. The Excel-G mailing list is monitored by the best Excel experts in the world. They answer every question. If you post an interesting enough problem these Excel gurus will compete among themselves to answer first and give the most elegant solution.
  2. Mr. Excel Message Boards: A very friendly forum whose members will usually provide you with an answer within 3-5 hours. A bunch of Microsoft MVPs (including the Mr. Excel gang) monitor the forums. And, of course, it has a pure html interface which makes it easier to use.
  3. Excel News Groups: If you prefer USENET groups to mailing lists or Message boards, than you’ll love the Microsoft Excel groups. Most questions asked will be answered within 12 hours.
  4. ExcelForum.com: ExcelForum.com provides a web interface to the Excel News groups. If you do not want to be bothered with the USENET interface, this site will is a useful alternative.

Excel Experts

Some Excel projects are too big/difficult to tackle alone. Here is a (short) list of some of the best hired guns in the Excel Field (If you know other top-notch Excel experts, drop a link to their site in the comments).

  1. Jon Peltier: If you have a charting project/problem, I would recommend working with Jon. Jon brings to the table over 20 years of Excel experience A PhD from MIT and is a Microsoft Excel MVP.
  2. Chip Pearson: Mr. Pearson is a renowned Excel expert and while his fees are not low, he is one of the best. If you need an urgent solution or have a critical project, I would consider asking Chip for help.
  3. Mr. Excel Consulting Services: The Mr. Excel team is probably the largest Excel consultancy in the world. Their ranks include numerous excel MVPs and they have an amazing amount of Excel Knowledge.
  4. JMT Consulting: A consulting service from two respected Excel MVPs: Masaru Kaji and Andrew Engwirda.

Excel Blogs and Tip Sites

Tips sites and Excel blogs will usually send you a daily Excel tip. Many Excel professionals register to these sites and read the daily tips to keep their Excel skills sharp. They also serve as repositories for thousands of Excel case studies.

  1. Daily Dose of Excel: A blog managed by Dick Kusleika and authored by many Excel Experts and MVPs. “Daily Dose” is updated several times a week and profiles tips, tricks and news from the excel Industry. Highly recommended!
  2. ExcelTip.com: Over the years ExcelTip amassed hundreds of tips and solutions to real world problems. You can either use the categories or the search function to find the information you want. You can also register to a tips newsletter. The site is managed by Joseph Rubin.
  3. Official Microsoft 2007 Blog: The Official Excel Blog. Written by the Excel product managers/programmers. It contains a lot of information and how-to articles about Excel. The level of articles on this blog varies from “useful to everyone” to “only for hardcore excel services programmers.”
  4. Vital News Excel Tips: Very similar to ExcelTip, this site contains hundreds of tips sorted into categories and offers a weekly newsletter.
  5. Chip Pearson Newsletter: A new service from Chip Pearson. Each issue of this newsletter contains a thorough examination of a technique or of an Excel function. For those of you that wish to gain deep knowledge of Excel, this is an excellent resource.
  6. Excel User: Excel User contains a “Visitor Question” section and many high quality articles. This site was created and maintained by Charles Kyd.
  7. Andrew’s Excel Tips: Andrew Engwirda writes one of the best Excel blogs. What separates Andrew from the flock is his vast amount of Excel and programming experience.
  8. Codswallop: Although we are not a strictly an Excel-centered blog, we plan to bring a lot of Excel goodies in near future. Don’t hesitate – subscribe now!
  9. Smurf On Spreadsheets: Simon Murphy is an Excel programming master. If you are into Excel Programming, this blog is perfect for you.
  10. The Ken Puls Blog: Ken’s blog is neither Excel centered nor frequently updated. However, when Ken does blog about Excel, it’s pure gold. Definitely worth checking out.
  11. XL Dennis: Dennis Wallentin writes about developing Excel centered solutions with the .Net framework.

Excel Templates

Templates can be a huge time saver and odds are that the spreadsheet you are trying to build already exists. We’ve divided Microsoft’s huge template repository into useful categories so you’ll be able to find the right template for you.

Business Related Templates

  1. Budget Templates: Whether you are managing your personal budget, your Wedding budget or your gardening budget, you’ll find a template for it here.
  2. Balance Sheets: You can find almost any kind of balance sheet here.
  3. Expense Reports: Unexpected expenses can have a nasty effect on your bottom line. Use these templates to record and control expenses (including traveling expenses).
  4. Business Forms: Here you can find all types of different forms, from a traveling advance request form to a car mileage log.
  5. Inventory Templates: Manage and track you inventory with these templates.
  6. Invoices, Work Orders, Packing Slips: This is a real time saver. Whether you work in retail or services, you will find the right invoice/work order template here.
  7. Purchase Orders: Not only will these templates help you get the exact the items you need on time and delivered to the right place, they also come in a variety of colors.
  8. Receipts: A variety of receipt templates.
  9. Time Sheets: Use these templates to track employee work time. You can choose a template that will sum the employee and overall working hours on a daily, weekly or even monthly basis.
  10. All kinds of Reports: Different financial and management reports.

Other Templates

  1. All Kinds of Lists: Phone List, Grocery List, Reading List, Gift List and much more.
  2. Planning Templates: Business and personal planning templates.
  3. Schedules: Schedule templates for your employee shifts, business and personal events.

AdditionalTemplate Sites

  1. Vertex42 Excel Templates: Dozens of Excel templates. Some even come with a user manual.
  2. OZGrid Excel Templates Page: Another big and famous collection of templates.

Excel Tools

Excel is the ultimate killer app. But there are cases where even Excel needs a little help. Here are some Excel Add-ins that can double your effectivness.

  1. Asap Utilities: Probably the best known Excel productivity add-in. Asap utilities contains advance selection options, advanced browsing capabilities, better formula handling and much more.
  2. Send Mail: This cool little freebie from Ron de Bruin that allows you to send an email with the contents of a workbook, a single sheet or even a selection area.
  3. Excel Sentry: Use the Excel Sentry to prevent your business data from falling into the competition’s hands. The Excel sentry allows you to encrypt your spreadsheet in such a way that only you or your employees/coworkers can use it.
  4. XL Statistics: A free statistics package that expands the existing Excel functionality.
  5. Palo: A free (open source) OLAP server for excel. On-line Analytical Processing servers usually cost hundreds of thousands and sometimes even millions of dollars. Jedox (the company that made Palo) is giving it away. Definitely worth checking out.
  6. PDF to Excel: One of the most stubborn sources of data for Excel is PDF files. Whether they are scanned or not, PDF2XL will extract the data for you.
  7. FlorenceSoft: This cool little app allows you to easily find the differences between two different sheets.
  8. Excel Password Remover: Do you have a terribly important sheet you encrypted and then forgot the password? The Excel Password remover is your locksmith.
  9. Tree Plan: A set of data analysis tools from Mike Middleton.
  10. DPlot: Create 2D and 3D graphs and plots with DPlot. Especially suited for Engineers and scientist that need expanded charting and plotting functionality. DPlot contains unique chart types such as, the Polar Chart, The triangle plot and more.
  11. DigDB: Another well known Microsoft Excel productivity add-in.

Additional Excel Resources

  1. Excel User Conference: The Excel user Conference, run by Daemon Longworth (MVP), is by far the best venue to advance you Excel skills. You will learn high-end Excel tips and tricks from the best Excel experts (all the instructors are Microsoft MVPs). Plus, everyone is extremely friendly and you’ll get a bunch of laughs and even a couple of beers.
  2. Charts by Jorge Camoes: A site dedicated to Excel charts and charts add-ins. Also runs a chart centered blog.
  3. Excel funny videos: Who said Excel wasn’t fun?
  4. Excel games: And to top the list. I present Excel – the gaming platform.

Now it’s time to Excel.

Freelancer’s Hyper-Drive: 131 Productivity Boosters for Email, Instant Messaging, Word, Excel, and More

Freelancers often have to wear many hats: accountant, boss, quality control, marketing department, and beyond, which can leave you feeling like there’s just not enough time in the day to do everything you’d like. Fortunately, there are a number of tools designed to help you speed up the process of working. Check out these productivity boosters for documents, communications, and more.

Email

Email itself is a productivity tool, but it often turns into a monster task that must be tackled. These tools will help you tame your inbox.

  1. ClearContext: If you have a hard time getting through email you’d rather ignore to get to the good stuff, ClearContext is about to make your life a lot easier. This information management system prioritizes your email, organizing it and assigning color codes. You’ll be able to identify your most important senders and let newsletters or less important senders get pushed down below your VIPs.
  2. Mail Templates: If you often reply to a number of emails on on the same few subjects, consider creating template responses for each one. You’ll save time and be consistent.
  3. copy2calendar: Appointment setting doesn’t have to be a time consuming process. With copy2calendar, you can automatically convert text containing appointment information into calendar entries.
  4. Actioneer: Use actioneer to speed up your Outlook actions like appointments, tasks, contacts, and mail messages.
  5. TimeToMeet: Arrange meetings quickly in Google, iCal, or Outlook using this easy program.
  6. Conversation Preview: Gmail users can view the first few lines of an email with Conversation Preview, even while they’re still in the message list view.
  7. iGTD: Mac users can take advantage of iGTD, a tool that organizes tasks straight out of your inbox and saves a link to the original email.
  8. CSV Exporter: Use CSV Exporter to import your address book contacts into Gmail.
  9. FlipMail: For email on the go, sign up with Teleflip’s FlipMail, a service that forwards email as a text message to your phone.
  10. Chilibase: Don’t spend 20 minutes trying to find that email Bob sent a month ago. Use Chilibase to see complete conversations from your contacts with a single click.
  11. l8r: If you’re working at 2AM but prefer that your client thinks you keep normal hours, you can use l8r to delay sending messages until a specified time. You can also use it to schedule emails that you know you’ll send, like reminders.
  12. SpamSieve: No one likes spam, especially when you have to wade through it to get to important emails. Combat this junk mail with SpamSieve, a program that zaps spam out of your inbox.
  13. Copernic Summarizer: If you find yourself wishing that your email correspondents would just get to the point, Copernic can lend you a helping hand. This tool summarizes mail messages and other documents, highlighting key concepts and sentences.
  14. Saved Searches: Check out this user script that allows you to save searches you’ll need to access frequently.
  15. Gmail Loader: If you’ve switched to Gmail, but still need to access your archives without going back and forth to your old email provider, check out Gmail Loader. It imports existing emails to your Gmail inbox so you’ll have easy access.
  16. Office Outlook Forum: Get quick answers to your pressing Outlook questions on this forum.
  17. emailStripper: To quickly get rid of email clutter that accumulates in long back-and-forth conversations, use emailStripper. Just paste your email into the tool, and it will clean up all extraneous characters.
  18. MailTags 2.0: This plugin for Mail.app allows you to add keywords and notes to your messages for quick retrieval.
  19. GmailThis: Send web pages quickly to anyone using GmailThis. The tool makes it easy to instantly send a message with a URL attached through Gmail.
  20. Getting Things Done Add-in: Productivity Leader David Allen has created an add-in that allows you to better accomplish his recommended workflow methodology.
  21. Microsoft Office Outlook Team Blog: Find out how to improve formatting, get rid of junk mail, organize, and more by reading the MSDN Outlook blog.
  22. Gmail Manager Add-on: Firefox users can take advantage of this Gmail add-on that displays email data at the bottom of your browser. This tool can show information from multiple Gmail accounts and is easy to customize.
  23. 10 Minute Mail: Save your real email for clients and other important people with 10 Minute Mail. This service allows you to sign up for a temporary email address that’s great for forums and other sign up forms that you think might sell your address to spammers.
  24. AmikaFreedom: Receiving email on your mobile device is convenient, but sometimes, you’re hit with an information overload. Use AmikaFreedom to trigger emails to forward to your wireless device when specified key words and phrases are used.
  25. Destroy beacons: Beacons are small images embedded in spam emails that, when downloaded by your email client, let spammers know they’ve got a hit. Avoid advertising your email in this way by blocking images from anyone not in your address book.
  26. Take Back Your Life Add-in: Get organized with templates, appointment prompts, and more functionality tools from Sally McGhee.
  27. Fuser: Use Fuser to consolidate your email accounts into one central place.
  28. ActiveWords: If you hate switching back and forth from Word to Outlook just to look up a contact, you’ll love ActiveWords. This tool makes Outlook “hot” in any Windows application, which allows you to look up contacts from a number of different programs.

Instant Messaging

IMs are a convenient communication tool, and there are a number of ways to improve their functionality. Read on to find out how you can share documents, schedule meetings, and send SMS messages using IMs.

  1. Acronyms: Use texting and chatroom acronyms to get your point across in fewer keystrokes. Of course, remember your audience: if you’re speaking to a client, you’ll need to tone down on the netspeak.
  2. Meebo: Share files with your contacts using Meebo’s IM.
  3. IMified: Access lots of web apps from one place using IMified.
  4. TodoBot: By setting up your own TodoBot, you can IM to do list items to yourself.
  5. Gaim: Use Gaim to chat on a number of instant messaging platforms at the same time.
  6. MyCyberTwin: Let a chatbot answer your IMs while you’re away.
  7. gTalk Sidebar: Firefox users can add on Google Talk as a sidebar, so you can chat while surfing web pages.
  8. AOL Mobile: With AOL Mobile, you can send a text message to SMS-enabled phones using the AOL Instant Messenger.
  9. Merge IM Contacts: Check out Lifehacker’s lowdown on how to get your AIM, MSN, Yahoo! and other contacts on Google Talk.

Word

For most users, Word is a fairly simple tool to use, but when you’re drowning in lots of documents, revisions, and lots of editing, it can be a mess. Clean it up with these Word boosters.

  1. Word Hyperlink Checker: Use this tool to make sure that all of the links in your Word document are active.
  2. Word Hotkeys: Check out this guide to find hotkey codes for common tasks.
  3. Boiler: Avoid excessive copying and pasting when combining Word files. Mesh multiple Word Files into one central file using Boiler.
  4. Save as PDF: With this tool, you can save any Word document as a PDF for easy reading.
  5. RapidoWrite: RapidoWrite makes it easy to cut down on repetitive text. Check it out for a good text replacement utility.
  6. Microsoft Office Word Team Blog: Check out the MSDN Word blog for tips, news, and more from Microsoft.
  7. Recover Lost Files: This guide offers tips for recovering Word files that would otherwise be lost forever.
  8. Fore Words Pro: Analyze your words for word echoes, differences, and more.
  9. Turn Off Word Features: For tips on how to turn off annoying and unnecessary Word features, be sure to take a look at this guide.
  10. Compare File Versions: If you’ve had someone edit your document, but they left you with no way to track their changes, you can find yourself spending a lot of time trying to find them. Use this tutorial to make comparing file versions a lot easier.
  11. Word Kit: Use Word Kit to produce frequently generated documents with ease and consistency.
  12. WordFast: Quickly translate text in Word using this handy tool.
  13. MS Works Converter: So your word processing file turned into more tabular data than you expected it to be? Not to worry, you can convert everything into an Excel file with this tool.
  14. Speed up Word: Word often loads lots of templates and add-ins that you may not need, which slows down the program. Read this tutorial from Lifehacker to find out how to stop them.
  15. Wordware: Wordware’s productivity pack has 45 tools designed to help you save time when using Word.
  16. AutoSummarize: If you need to summarize a large amount of text, don’t go through the tedium of reading it yourself. Check out this tutorial on how to use AutoSummarize to highlight key points.
  17. SumsBox-W: Improve Word’s number and tables functions with this handy tool.
  18. Docx Converter: So your client has Word 2007 and has started sending you .docx files that are incompatible with your Word version. Make them readable by using the Docx Converter.

Excel

Excel is a great tool for wrangling lots of data into one convenient place, but it can get out of hand. Find out how to streamline your spreadsheets, create easier graphs, and find time-saving templates with these tools.

  1. Daily Dose of Excel: Check out Dick Kusleika’s Daily Dose of Excel for help with formulas, functions, and lots more.
  2. Mr. Excel: Bill Jelen, Mr. Excel, has over 18 years of spreadsheet experience, and he’s more than willing to help you figure out how to better use Excel.
  3. Marketing Charts: Download Excel spreadsheet templates and marketing charts with this resource.
  4. Copy Text to Multiple Worksheets: Find out how to copy text from one worksheet to many others in this answer thread.
  5. Conditional Formatting: Formatting in Excel is a great way to make data easier on the eyes and highlight important information, but it’s a lot of work. Find out how to set up conditional formatting to make the entire process automated.
  6. ASAP Utilities: Use ASAP Utilities to automate frequently used tasks in Excel.
  7. Excel Forum: If you need help using Excel, check out these forums for information on worksheet functions, programming, and more.
  8. Excel Keystrokes: Save yourself some time and the perils of carpal tunnel syndrome by checking out these easy Excel keystrokes.
  9. Nuts About Microsoft Excel: On this blog, you’ll find loads of tips and solutions for MS Excel.
  10. Excel AutoFilter: Use AutoFilter to sort by selected criteria without changing any data.
  11. Dual Excel Worksheets: Find out how to view two Excel worksheets at once at Digital Streets.
  12. Excel Templates: Save yourself loads of time by using these Excel templates instead of starting from scratch.
  13. Excel In-cell Graphs: Check out this link for a tutorial on how to easily create a bar graph inside Excel cells.
    14. Excel Split Views: Read this tutorial to find out how to split your Excel screen so that you can view and edit two different areas at once.
  14. Excel Gantt Charting: Turn Excel into project management software using this tempate from David Seah.
  15. ExcelUser: On ExcelUser, find Excel news and tips, create Excel Dashboards, and learn how to better use Excel in your business.
  16. Excel Experts: If you’re in need of an Excel Expert, check out this directory.
  17. Microsoft Excel: Check out the Microsoft Excel blog for beta news, improvements, and more.

PDF

PDF is a versatile, functional document format that offers more than meets the eye. Find out how to save time and stretch your PDFs to the limit with these resources.

  1. PDF Converter Professional: Streamline your data input from clients by creating fillable PDF forms with this tool.
  2. Combine PDFs: You can use Adobe’s Insert Page tool to combine PDF files, but if you’ve got a few to do, that can prove to be time consuming. Instead, use this tool to merge multiple PDF files into one with a few easy clicks.
  3. Sumatra PDF Viewer: For a lighter, faster PDF viewer than Adobe Reader, check out Sumatra.
  4. PDF Download: If your clients send you a lot of PDF documents, you probably have to figure out how to deal with them on a regular basis. Using PDF Download, you can specify how Firefox downloads these files.
  5. Adobe Reader 8 Optimization: Get Adobe Reader 8 to boot up faster by following this tutorial.
  6. Skim: Take notes on your PDF file as you read it using Skim. Some features include highlighting, circling, and more. You’ll also be able to see your notations and jump to them more easily.
  7. PDFill PDF Editor: This utility corrals lots of common PDF manipulation actions into one easy interface.
  8. ScanR: Snap photos and turn them into emailable PDFs using ScanR.
  9. Adobe Reader SpeedUp: Adobe Reader is known for its slow load times due to unnecessary plugins. Use Adobe Reader SpeedUp to selectively remove plugins that you don’t need.
  10. Notepad Generator: Create personalized PDF notepaper that you can print out and take to meetings using this generator.
  11. PDF to Image Converter: If your client can’t quite grasp the concept of downloading Adobe Reader, save yourself the time you’ll need to explain it, and just use this tool to send them an image file instead.
  12. Shoka: Corral all of your PDFs in this library manager. This tool makes it quick and easy to search, share, and tag your PDF documents.
  13. PDFCreator: Don’t spend time finding ink and paper when you can just print to PDF. Use the PDFCreator to print PDF files from just about any Windows application.
  14. RSS 2 PDF: Take your RSS newsfeeds offline by converting them to PDF that you can read at your convenience.

Phone & Text

The phone may seem like a tool that operates more slowly than its digital counterparts, but it has a number of time-saving tricks to offer, too. Use phone and text messaging to budget, take notes, navigate traffic, and more, all on the fly.

    Reminders: Set up reminder messages that arrive on your phone at a scheduled time.
  1. Expense Tracker: Read this guide to find out how to use K7.net’s free voicemail to send yourself messages for expense tracking.
  2. Yahoo! Mobile: Don’t go searching around for your phone to send a text message–just send one using Yahoo! Mobile.
  3. YouTube Mobile: Share videos on YouTube on the go by using YouTube Mobile to upload via your cell phone.
  4. Pinger: Forgot to send an email? Don’t worry, you can send an audio email message to your recipient instead using Pinger.
  5. MoneyManager: Track transactions on your phone with MoneyManager. Reports can be generated and sent to your email.
    6. Yahoo! Local: Don’t worry about taking the time to print or write out directions from Yahoo!–just send them as a text message to your phone.
  6. Popularity Dialer: If you know your client meeting is going to run long but you have things to do, you can use Popularity Dialer to schedule a call to your cell phone that will allow you to excuse yourself.
  7. The Traffic Line: Call the Traffic Line to find out what traffic is like in your area so you’ll never be late again.
  8. CallBurner: If you need to keep audio records of your Skype conversations, it’s easy to do it with CallBurner. Using this tool, you’ll be able to go back and review what you’ve said without having to do a lot of work.
  9. Disable Skype Notifications: Check out this guide to find out how to keep Skype messages and notifications from popping up constantly.
  10. CallWave: With CallWave, your voicemails are transcribed, highlighting only the key information.
  11. Jott: Send yourself a note by recording a message with Jott. The service will transcribe your voice into text and email it to you.
  12. SmartCam: If you need to use video chat, but don’t have a webcam, you can turn your Smartphone into one.
  13. Dodgeball: Assure your clients that you’re on the way to your meeting by broadcasting your location via Dodgeball.
  14. Dial DIR-ECT-IONS: Dial this number, and you can get a text message on our phone with driving directions.
  15. Blog From Your Cell Phone: Send a text or photo SMS to go@blogger.com, and you’ll be able to make posts to your blog.
  16. Google info: Send Google a text message to find listings, dictionary definitions, and more.
  17. Skylook: With this Outlook extension, you can record calls, get text alerts, voicemail in your inbox, reminders to your phone, and much more.
  18. Pickle: Share videos and photos with clients using your phone and Pickle’s service. You’ll just send your files to a special email address and it will publish them to sites like MySpace, Blogger, or your own site.

Other

Check out these tools to find even more boosters for documents, travel, collaboration, and more.

  1. AutoHotKey: Using AutoHotKey, you can turn any block of text or keystroke sequence into a hotkey that will perform repetitive tasks.
  2. Google Presentation: Google’s answer to PowerPoint makes it easy to do simple manipulations of PowerPoint files without actually firing up the program.
  3. Delivery Intercept: Control what happens to your package once it leaves your hands with this feature from UPS.
  4. Ditto: Corral your copy-and-paste function with this handy clipboard manager.
  5. TripIt: For entrepreneurs on the go, check out TripIt, a tool that automativally organizes your travel itinerary using email.
  6. Guide to Hotkeys: Hotkeys are keyboard shortcuts that allow you to execute an action without using your mouse. This guide has hotkeys for email, messaging, file management, and more.
  7. Audio Documents: Learn how to record written documents to audio for “reading” on the go with this tutorial.
  8. Mango: If you need to learn a foreign language, but don’t have time to hit the books, check out Mango for courses in conversational language.
  9. DocuFarm: This Firefox add-on makes it quick and easy to preview documents in your browser without having to take the time to open up a new program.
  10. QuickLogger: Keep track of your workday by logging tasks into QuickLogger.
  11. Scriblink: Collaborate with others on a digital whiteboard with Scriblink.
  12. Mini Map Sidebar: If you’re reading an email invite to a meeting, but have no idea how to get there, you can fire up the Mini Map Sidebar to map addresses and get directions without ever leaving your browser’s email client.
  13. Google Alerts: Keep track of your online reputation, favorite news items, and anything else you regularly check online by setting a Google Alert. You’ll be notified of any new pages that include your key words.
  14. Backpack: This productivity tool has lots of great features, including the ability to send scheduled or unscheduled reminders to email, SMS, or both.
  15. Snapter: With Snapter, you can scan photos of business cards and documents using your digital camera.
  16. Airport Parking Reservations: If you’re always getting to the airport at the very last moment possible, check out this service so you’ll save time parking.
  17. Virtual Folders: If you’re using Vista and find yourself often searching your machine for the same thing, you can save your search results as a virtual folder. Find out how here.
  18. FileTaxes: Who needs an accountant? File taxes for your employees on this site, and the service will generate forms, submit them to the IRS, and mail them to recipients for you.
  19. Office Jargon: Check out this handy guide to office jargon from Lifehacker and Brazen Careerist to spend less time trying to figure out what in the world your corporate clients are talking about.
  20. Digital Filing System: Read this tutorial to find out how to take your filing system online, creating a time saving, easily searchable database.
  21. Online Sign Off: Streamline your document approval process by taking it online with this service.
  22. Mailbox Map: Don’t spend time searching for a mailbox–just check out Mailbox Maps, a tool that finds nearby mailboxes and provides pickup information on each one.
  23. Windows Keyboard Shortcut of the Day: For time-saving keyboard shortcuts, check out this ongoing blog.
  24. Monkey On Your Back: Remind coworkers and clients of deadlines using Monkey On Your Back, a tool that sends scheduled email reminders to others.

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