15 functions in Excel for any user - Part 1

Today I will talk about Excel functions, one of the most important tools in Excel. We will create a list of 15 functions not very used but that can be very, very useful at some point. This entry is the 1st of 2 entries. Here it goes!

1. Remove the spaces from a text except single spaces between words

Sometimes the data are cluttered, dirty, with spaces where you do not want to have, right? As one of the most useful ways to help you clean your data is the TRIM function.

This function removes all spaces from a string except for single spaces between words. Let us examine an example.

=TRIM("The     wizard     of     Excel      ") = The wizard of Excel


The function has removed those spaces before, after and in between to leave the text clean and ready for analysis.

Introduction to band charts in Excel

Today I want to talk about creating band charts in Excel. I use them quite a lot as they help the user to a quick understanding of the visualisation without overloading the chart.

So that we all understand, what I intend to show you is a chart like the following:

The band represents the area between the maximum and the minimum for all products for any one year.

It can also be seen that it is a dynamic chart, each time a product is selected one series in the chart change (could be more if you wanted).


To build a band chart like that one we need to follow a few steps. Let's see how.

Highlighting maximum / minimum value of a series in a chart in Excel

Have you ever had a chart and wondered how you could highlight the maximum or minimum value of the series in that Excel chart.

We will discuss exactly that today.

Let's see how we can do it and create a chart like the one below: