@@meliheser01 no, 99% of both excel and Word skills will lose all value. 90% of programming skills will also be useless. Proofreading however will greatly increase in value, as will fact checking and tone analysis.
your xlookup function only works because there are 1 unique France for each month. If you had multiple "France" for each month, only SUMIFS and using PIVOT table would work.
I would consider myself an advanced excel user, and had no idea I could add a 2nd criteria to Xlookup using & - I would have used index match! Great video
Index match with multiple criteria is a bit more complicated though, but for sure, I would too. Never got into Xlookup as I never really needed it, and the naming criteria makes me sick after all of the years where people still uses VLOOKUP instead of Index Match.
You can, but it's very computationally expensive for anything more than a couple dozen records. Your best bet is to combine the two criteria in a separate column first, or you're constantly going to be waiting for the sheet to calculate
Personally I prefer another method where you lookup 1 in the result array of a product of the two conditions. for example =XLOOKUP(1,(A1:A4=D1)*(B1:B4=D2),C1:C4,"",0)
During my interview with my current employer, I was given small tasks in Excel to 'prove' my qualifications. It's very similar, in fact, to this video. However, the thing my employer did to test me, which I think was harder to do, was decipher already written formulas. He gave me 3 different preexisting data tables with formulas already in them. He then told me to explain what the formuals were doing. The first 2 were easy enough, but the last one was absolutely atrocious. What got me the job was when I started deleting his formula and rewrote it in a cleanliner/more cohesive way.
The lack of ability by other employees to decipher formulas, pivots and other structures i developed, is o e of the reasons I'm irreplaceable. Thus is a lot i learned while back, to sometimes make the calculations more complex than they should be.
Agreed. I'd hire someone like you over anyone who solved the actual formula. I always prefer someone who can look beyond their current task and ask a question like "What is this formula actually trying to do" rather than simply solving the given task. These types of folks usually move a little slower on the frontend, but save GOBS of time overall in trimming down old and obsolete business practices. Too many times I've heard the "because we've always done it this way" in response to why something exists. Wish there was a way to screen for people who think the way you do. I'm a working IT Manager (like, actually working with end-users as well as managing a small department over three locations). I don't have time or talent when it comes to hiring people - I've just been lucky to have an awesome HR department.
@@iz5772 "Thus is a lot i learned while back, to sometimes make the calculations more complex than they should be." I'd get rid of anyone I found with this attitude because they clearly but themselves above the team and the business. When I started programming back in 1966 (IBM assembler code on 1400 series) I had this attitude but was taken to one side by my boss who explained things about the real world.
@@arthurdent2900 You were bullied into submission by your supervisor and now you lack the courage to step out of the box your were verbally coerced into. Very unfortunate... Is your ex boss still alive? What is his attitude nowadays?
For question 3 I would add in "Required profit" to cell B9 and "$5000" to cell C9. Cell C11 is then a simple formula: =roundup(C9+C8)/(C6-C7) It's now dynamic and you can change the required profit to see how many sales it would need.
Learn something new every time you upload. I didn't know xlookup can do 2 lookups at once. I only knew index & match for Q4. So glad this channel exists.
Actually it doesn't do 2 lookups at once. It's a workaround. Under the hood, the & sign basically creates an invisible virtual column that consists of Country and Date just written back to back (concatenated). Same with the criterion. And then you match that virtual criterion to your virtual column. Whenever Excel finds a row where "CountryDate" equals "FranceJan-23" it will pick it 😂 Implicit requirement that the couple "CountryDate" is unique in the dataset, otherwise it will only pick the first one, whereas SUMIFS would sum all matching entries.
How my approach for Q4 =XLOOKUP(1,(CriteriaRange1=Criteria1)*(CriteriaRange2=Criteria2),ReturnColumn) Been using this to replace Index & Match function
This was freaking cool. Im about to start a job where excel skills are usefull. Never have i ever really used excel and found it kinda tedious. But wow its so cool. I like programming and this kinda got my interest ticking. Thanks for the video
The third one I made a cell for "profit goal" and set it to $5000. If you do a little vit if algebra you'll realize you can get the number by dividing (fixed cost + goal profit)/(price per shirt - cost per unit). Use round up on that. Now you can change the goal profit, price per shirt, fixed cost, and cost per unit and it will adjust itself.
@@Dan_Gilpin A quick bit of algebraic manipulation is suitable here, but if you want to optimize across multiple criteria, you'd be best off going with Solver. (Goalseek can only optimize for one variable.)
Awesome tips! Here are a couple notes on Question 3 and 4: For Question 3, you can use Solver, rather than Goal Seek. Using Solver, you can create a parameter on the 'Units' sold to be an integer. That way you don't have to do the roundup formula at the end. For Question 4, you can use sumproduct for the second formula. =SUMPRODUCT(--($B$11:$B$22 = $B7), --($C$11:$C$22 = C$5), $F$11:$F$22). Then copy/paste across (Or Shift right and Ctrl R as you mention). Unfortunately, I would have to count points against someone for using any 'lookup' type of formula when summing numbers (even an Xlookup).
True, in this dataset the couple CountryDate is unique so it is fine to find only the first match, but if there could be multiple rows for France and January arguably the question would want the sum of all matches not just the first one. The sum is conceptually superior. But then SUMIFS is the only elegant option, SUMPRODUCT is clever use of Boolean arithmetics but isn’t very readable.
@@counterleo Once you get used to sumproduct, it's not too bad. In certain analytics departments, sumproduct is heavily used and preferred to sumifs as sumproduct is at least 1.5x more efficient at calculating on large data sets (or at least this used to be the case).
@@beezmemoire9376 The Solver is a tool in excel (add-ins --> solver). I did show the sumproduct formula above. basically you put in a criteria like shown for B11:B22 and then equals to what you are trying to map to (in this case, b7). You can repeat this as many times as you want, just put a comma, then 2 dashes, then open parentheses, and do another check. when you get to the what you are actually trying to sum (like the 'sum range' in sumifs) you don't do the double dashes or parentheses (F11:F22 in my example above).
My friend at work is a whiz at excel. He created a formula at an old job that made us run thru jobs faster, which pretty much eliminated a job altogether. Though I don’t want to eliminate jobs where I work, I do work with 95% all licensed engineers, and I’m just a guy with a cubicle making autoCAD/Revit drawings for them. Though I would like to elevate my excel game to make our jobs easier and/or impress my boss so I can start making the big bucks!
4:59, I can't believe there is a tool for this 🙂. I paused first to try and get the number of sales myself, and this is how I got it: (Fixed cost + 5000) / (Price per shirt - Cost per unit)
I like this kind of videos. Thank you for putting these videos. Xlookup formula will not work if you have multiple values for the month. I will use for 2nd formula as below =SUMPRODUCT((Country=“France”)*(Date=“Jan-23”)*Revenue) Here Country, Date & Revenue are the ranges France & Jan-23 are dynamic values
In his example there was one and only one record for each Country and Month, which is fine. But say you have multiple records for the same date and country, xlookup will return only the first match to encounter. sumif will do it correctly. So using xlookup is not a good example really, since there is a silent assumption made on how the underlying data is structured.
1.Highlight in red 10 Lowest 2.2 Conditions -IF(And 3.Break Even sales (Qty)-Use Goal seek 4.2 Different Formulas with 2 conditions as Horizontal & vertical- SumIFS( and Xlook up (& ) for second condition.
Fun video for self-assessment! My two formulas were Xlookup using the & (I learned this months ago and it's one of my favorite FAVORITE functions in excel to-date!) and then a filter formula using two criteria in the filter by using the asterisks functionality in the criteria "($B$11:$B$22=$B7)*($C$11:$C$22=C$5)". Thanks for the engaging content!
Thank you for explaining these concepts in a way that is open and encourages learning, your user friendly approach helps me understand and implement these with my work - thank you!
🤯 I did not know about the "&" for the xlookup formula, I thought you could only nest xlookup to search multiple criteria Thank you Sir, i sincerely appreciate you sharing :)
For last question, Xlookup doesn't give the sum for selected criteria rather it will through the first matching result. In the table we have only one entry for each month for france so the answer was matching otherwise not.
This is the way. It's also good to put your criteria in parenthesis with '--' before, like this --(x=y), which converrts the true/false output to 1/0 output making matrix multiplication smoother.
I had SUMIF and SUMPRODUCT as well. Like with many things, there's multiple ways of getting to the right answer. As long as one gets there within the constraints applied and time required, then it's all good!
I'm old school, I don't know these new functions, my results would have seemed more clunky but it would have got the job done. For the 3rd it's a calculation formula. For the last sumifs I didn't know and I didn't know xlookup. My degree was 20+ years ago and I don't work professionally in any IT based positions but I've kept my mind sharp. For the last I'd have done an if and if set up and second the same rather than nesting the and but otherwise. The good thing is it's showing me for all I know I can still know more. I'm sure an updated course could bring me back up to speed. Thanks for the video.
cool, like the test. didnt know about the goal seek tool. for last task when using xlookup for multiple criteria i like to use this format as i find it easy to visualise: xlookup(1,(range1=criteria1)*(range2=criteria2),return range) so in your example it would be: xlookup(1,($B$11:$B$22=$B7)*($C$11:$C$22=C5),$F$11:$F$22) helps when the data is in a table too.
Question 3 I would use an adaptive formula that will always work, even if you change the Assumptions table: =ROUNDUP((C8/(-C7+C6))+(5000/(C6-C7)),0) 🙂 Thanks for your videos! @Kenji Explains Greetings from Moscow)
@@LTJchrisRBF Hey! Not bad! I didn't check your formula, but it seems I missed some lectures on algebra :) But you still forgot about the fixed 5k :) (I know I'm a terrible person) :)
great to find you! 🙏🙏🙏, you are a blessing, being now unemployed, I cant afford paying a Microsoft certificate training session. As long as I am updated, with the newest version and features. This helps a lot! looking forward to Word, Outlook, ppt..Thanks a lot!
I got 3 out of 4, but question 4 actually wasn’t the question I missed. I am actually extremely familiar with using lookup or match with multiple criteria, and in fact I believe there is a third viable formula you could use. However I have never used the What-If Analysis feature before, let alone the Goal-Seek tool. Maybe the test administrator could guide me to it like in the video, because I understood how it worked almost instantly. But I don’t know if that would have counted for a point or not. EDIT - A WORD OF CAUTION AGAINST USING A CONCATENATED ARRAY THAT I JUST EXPERIENCED THIS MORNING: If you are looking for criteria that are represented by numbers (for example I was looking to find a match for 1&21) you may find a false match for 12&1! Both evaluate to 121, so the match with the smaller row number will be selected, which was giving me an incorrect result! I find it much safer to use conditional statements multiplied together when I’m working with multiple criteria.
For me question 1 to 3 was fine. Knew it before he started. On Q4, the first one, Sumifs, I got, but I would use a formula different to the Xlookup. Interesting how all sorts of ways to get to the same result.
You may know this but for those who don't, sumproduct with three arrays evaluated to 1/0 does this easily. =sumproduct(array1, array2, array 3). Array1 would be countryrange=country, if you wrap it in parenthesis with --() it becomes 1/0: --($B11:$B22=$B6). Similarly the date lookup is --($C11:$C22=C$5). lastly the revenue is just the revenue array. To make life even easier, name the arrays. Then your sumproduct will look like this: =sumproduct(--(country=$B6),--(month=C$5),revenue) In essence, this runs a bunch of AND statements on each row in the multiplied arrays, so it will return 1 * 1 * revenue if everything matches, and return 0 if any criteria don't match, then adds them all up.
@@adamwolach This is was precisely what I meant when I said there was a third viable formula, as well as when I said “multiplying conditional statements together”.
You won't have and shouldn't. Define the dataset and build the formula once, done. Giving defined names to cells, your formula bar should just have... =ROUNDUP((FixedCosts+SaleTarget)/SaleProfit),0) And that way if you get hit by a bus on the way to work, the work experience kid can read exactly what you did and life goes on...not for you, the business. You can load that up wherever you want for any product you want. Targets and costs can change and it'll just keep showing the correct figure. Job done once in a minute, never do it again. Querying the data and it'll be showing the correct adjusted figure when the file opens. That's literally all that Excel feature is doing, but you don't have to fiddle around with it every time. Always understand these kind of Excel features. Never use them unless one-off and it's fine to make a quick mess because the workbook is going to get deleted in a minute after.
@@adamwolach I'd have tables with 'colHeader' defined and paste this formula in every cell... =SUM(FILTER( Sales[Revenue], (Sales[Country]=[@Country]) * (Sales[Date]=colHeader), 0)) And then if the manager wants any other variables like sales over 1000, just slap another line in... =SUM(FILTER( Sales[Revenue], (Sales[Country]=[@Country]) * (Sales[Date]=colHeader) * (Sales[Quantity]>1000), 0))
All of these were really easy. Excel just feels extremely simple if you're doing any sort of technical work day-to-day. Will continue to take a while to phase out as those in functional areas continue to resist change but eventually Excel will be a thing of the past.
Really loved this exercise. Thanks much. Also the sample excel file helps a ton to speed up the process if you want to do it yourself. One note though for those using excel online, the What If Analysis option is not available there.....
Only, that its not the Solution to the question. The task is to use two different formulas. This is not about this special use case but about how you understand and tackle the task and how you unterstand the way excel formulas work and if you can think around the corner…
Great video. Xlookup with multiple conditions is a new learning. I guess SUMIFs is easy when there are multiple criteria's and an aggregation needs to be performed. Xlookup is useful only when the values are not repeated in the table.
Haven't got ot use the xlookup and goalseek but everything else i knew. Always have to keep learning with excel. Excel is a very powerful tool when you know how to use it
I used to set an interview test when looking for trainers in an IT centre. It was to recreate an IDENTICAL table in EACH of the Office suite, including identical formatting. This was 25 years ago without instant tools. Of many candidates I found ONE. The only one who had been formally trained, not self- taught. To get the best out of software, and not make catastrophic mistakes, is to get a formal training.
@@ttsait my recent experience of self taught (in schools) is that I still receive documents which have been created “visually” , which when moved or imported “jump about” and need a global formatting to be of any use! The basics are missing! I am sure your courses are great. We just need more people to train!!!!
My engineering program had an excel mastery course as part of the major, but at my first job out of college, they were more concerned with my trig skills over excel, even though many of us use this program 90% of the day logging data lol! It def pays to know this.
I used the SUMIFS recently and it was an absolute nightmare because i was dealing with data about dates... yours was way easier because you just had to confront text. I had to set a condition to determine if a date was before or after another one. Again, a nightmare.
Something to note about CTRL-SHIFT-(ARROW KEY) I remember when I learned this, changed my working life. But know this: it ONLY goes until a blank cell. If you have blanks, it'll stop there. Just keep tapping the arrow of the direction you're going to bypass it.
ctrl + end/ctrl + shft + end bypasses blanks and takes you to the last row of a block of adjacent cells. if you are trying to highlight columns, you can then just use the left arrow to go back to the column/s you want to highlight if ctrl/shft/end takes you too far right.
In the third case it would be much more efficient to use a formula instead; our target is C8 + 5000 >= Units * (C6 - C7), or target = C8 + 5K / (C6 - C7) which would resolve to 20,000 / 21.49 = 931 units sold to hit the target. This would give you not only a target, but also a very easy template to then use later on
As an analyst, I agree with other comments about Q2 but I see if from a different perspective and I contend that Kenji may have gotten it wrong himself. Extrapolating the minimum requirements of $500k revenue and $25k profit will result in a 5% margin (25/500). From Kenji's answer, Projects B and C are rejected due to them being less than $500k revenue, however Project B has an incredible 78% margin (over 15 times better than the minimum) and Project C's margin is 15.5% which is over three times better than the Minimum requirement.
@@chrisadeniyi4 I would have added an extra cell in H8 that calculated the target margin is 5% . I'd keep the column E formulae but I would then add an extra column in F5 down calculating the margin for each row and highlighting those with a margin > 5%. I would then Add one more column with the Decision to be either "Reject" or "Accept based on margin". Technically, Kenji's answer is correct if the hiring manager just wants to see if you know how to write formula, my answer is arguably correct if they want someone who can provide a full analysis so better decisions can be made
I think im buying the course. I felt so behind in all of them. I remember excel from my School Of Business college days but man that was just to get some hw and projects done.
I am an IGCSE ICT and A-level IT in a Cambridge school. And proudly I can say I could solve all of the without seeing the answers! Thank you for this video. It motivating me to do more challenges and improve myself more.
@@KenjiExplains hi I've just completed my articleship and i want to go so long in finance, through your video I create my resume and applied some to best summer analyst program. Till now there is no response from their side but I'm trying some better will come surely. Till now I want to work on my skill and also I've many more to ask and need somewhere your guidance where I can contact to u.
Regarding question 2, if I were hiring, I'd be looking for the applicant that could do the excel work, but who would also see beyond the numbers on the screen, and would actually question the question. Obviously, the criteria for acceptance should be changed. Any intelligent business would not reject Project B, instead they would choose it as the first project to accept.
This. I had the advantage that I was a qualified accountant and not a qualified IT [though I was the go-to IT person in my section] and when I saw that level of profit I immediately thought the chosen criteria were not good business.
Would you consider the use of sumproduct with the date as a boolean to be a "different" formula than sumifs? In principle, they're the same, but it's certainly a different function...
Regarding question 3, using the Goalseeker function leaves unanswered whether a candidate understands how to do a break-even / profit calculation in the first place, which is arguably the more important question, I would say. In other words, what's the point of being good at using Excel functions if one doesn't understand how something should be calculated correctly in the first place?! With respect to question 4 I would use a pivot table. The data set in this example is small, in reality this kind of questions usually pertain to large sets of data. Pivots are easier to check for errors and also easier to change. Once users of information get a question answered, they tend to ask follow-up question and in many other cases these are monthly exercises where the number of records change, while the nature of the data stays the same (in which case you have to change all the ranges using formulas mentioned here, while pivots automatically take care of the number of rows)
The profit question can also be done algebraically. If you know profit = (price - cost) x quantity - 15000, then you can solve for the quantity at profit 5000 as quantity = (5000 + 15000)/(price - cost) which gives the same answer as above :)
Great video! Could you maybe explain this scenario: you have a project budget, and you need to move 5% from one budget line to another.? How to accomplish that? I had this task on one of my job tests. Thank you in advance!
I got 2 of 4 questions correct, 3 I would have solved in some other way instead of Goal seeker. 4th really taught me my current understanding about Excel.😅
On the last one the xlookup will only return a correct result if there's only one entry for France in each month. If there is a second entry you'll want to stick with the sumifs. If i had an interview on this, I think I'd have better results explaining that than I would by actually running an xlookup.
It's funny that even though I would consider myself a relatively advanced Excel user there are still features of it that I have never used (like Goal Seek, I've never once used that). I guess it's because as much as I like using Excel it's still just a handy tool to me as opposed to something really necessary to do my job. I don't use it to solve problems or analyze data, I usually just use it to take care of otherwise very tedious tasks.
Nice I didn't know about the "&" hack for Xlookup. That's super cool that will actually help me out a bit! I use Python increasingly for my data needs, but I still use google sheets/excel regularly for smaller data sets! That will help!
Question 2, I know this is just on the formula but I would expect an analyst to query the minimum requirements at a glance for Project B. If they moved on without having any comments I wouldn’t consider it a pass.
I consider myself a capable user, (Decent with Formulas, VBA, and Power Query) not necessarily a master but good enough that anyone who doesn't really know how to use excel could think I was ended up getting 3/4 didn't know u could do SUMIF like that, normally i'd just use helper columns
@@counterleo for reporting yes, pivot table but if you want to be operating that table for linking to other tables and things like that, I guess it is better to have formulas.
very very good video, more like this questions pls or direct me for website so I can practice in excel and analysis I try in Question no4 to use filter function and it works thank U for this amazing Channel
🔥 Take our Excel for Business & Finance Course: www.careerprinciples.com/courses/excel-for-business-finance
gotta Q, when Microsoft release copilot, are the knowledge will be still useful?
@@meliheser01 no, 99% of both excel and Word skills will lose all value. 90% of programming skills will also be useless. Proofreading however will greatly increase in value, as will fact checking and tone analysis.
This is amazing
Can I take this course with no prior knowledge on excel?
your xlookup function only works because there are 1 unique France for each month. If you had multiple "France" for each month, only SUMIFS and using PIVOT table would work.
I would consider myself an advanced excel user, and had no idea I could add a 2nd criteria to Xlookup using & - I would have used index match! Great video
Index match with multiple criteria is a bit more complicated though, but for sure, I would too. Never got into Xlookup as I never really needed it, and the naming criteria makes me sick after all of the years where people still uses VLOOKUP instead of Index Match.
You can, but it's very computationally expensive for anything more than a couple dozen records. Your best bet is to combine the two criteria in a separate column first, or you're constantly going to be waiting for the sheet to calculate
@@HateSpeechMoreLikeBasedSpeechpower query goes brrrr
Personally I prefer another method where you lookup 1 in the result array of a product of the two conditions.
for example
=XLOOKUP(1,(A1:A4=D1)*(B1:B4=D2),C1:C4,"",0)
I would have used the SUMIFS and the SUMPRODUCT formulas.
During my interview with my current employer, I was given small tasks in Excel to 'prove' my qualifications. It's very similar, in fact, to this video. However, the thing my employer did to test me, which I think was harder to do, was decipher already written formulas. He gave me 3 different preexisting data tables with formulas already in them. He then told me to explain what the formuals were doing. The first 2 were easy enough, but the last one was absolutely atrocious. What got me the job was when I started deleting his formula and rewrote it in a cleanliner/more cohesive way.
Please I would like to learn more from you,I really love your experience
The lack of ability by other employees to decipher formulas, pivots and other structures i developed, is o e of the reasons I'm irreplaceable.
Thus is a lot i learned while back, to sometimes make the calculations more complex than they should be.
Agreed. I'd hire someone like you over anyone who solved the actual formula. I always prefer someone who can look beyond their current task and ask a question like "What is this formula actually trying to do" rather than simply solving the given task. These types of folks usually move a little slower on the frontend, but save GOBS of time overall in trimming down old and obsolete business practices. Too many times I've heard the "because we've always done it this way" in response to why something exists.
Wish there was a way to screen for people who think the way you do. I'm a working IT Manager (like, actually working with end-users as well as managing a small department over three locations). I don't have time or talent when it comes to hiring people - I've just been lucky to have an awesome HR department.
@@iz5772 "Thus is a lot i learned while back, to sometimes make the calculations more complex than they should be." I'd get rid of anyone I found with this attitude because they clearly but themselves above the team and the business. When I started programming back in 1966 (IBM assembler code on 1400 series) I had this attitude but was taken to one side by my boss who explained things about the real world.
@@arthurdent2900 You were bullied into submission by your supervisor and now you lack the courage to step out of the box your were verbally coerced into. Very unfortunate... Is your ex boss still alive? What is his attitude nowadays?
about question 4 , i knew sumifs... but Xlookup with the " & " ... wow... just magic
thak you very much
For question 3 I would add in "Required profit" to cell B9 and "$5000" to cell C9.
Cell C11 is then a simple formula:
=roundup(C9+C8)/(C6-C7)
It's now dynamic and you can change the required profit to see how many sales it would need.
Halfway through question 4 was super simple for me, but I didn't know I could do xlookup with two criteria; thanks!!
news to me too. Very cool!
Learn something new every time you upload. I didn't know xlookup can do 2 lookups at once. I only knew index & match for Q4. So glad this channel exists.
Actually it doesn't do 2 lookups at once. It's a workaround. Under the hood, the & sign basically creates an invisible virtual column that consists of Country and Date just written back to back (concatenated). Same with the criterion. And then you match that virtual criterion to your virtual column. Whenever Excel finds a row where "CountryDate" equals "FranceJan-23" it will pick it 😂
Implicit requirement that the couple "CountryDate" is unique in the dataset, otherwise it will only pick the first one, whereas SUMIFS would sum all matching entries.
9:29 &b
How my approach for Q4
=XLOOKUP(1,(CriteriaRange1=Criteria1)*(CriteriaRange2=Criteria2),ReturnColumn)
Been using this to replace Index & Match function
I love the way you explain, straight to point! Indeed you are heaven sent to newbies like me❤
This was freaking cool. Im about to start a job where excel skills are usefull. Never have i ever really used excel and found it kinda tedious. But wow its so cool. I like programming and this kinda got my interest ticking. Thanks for the video
The third one I made a cell for "profit goal" and set it to $5000. If you do a little vit if algebra you'll realize you can get the number by dividing (fixed cost + goal profit)/(price per shirt - cost per unit). Use round up on that. Now you can change the goal profit, price per shirt, fixed cost, and cost per unit and it will adjust itself.
This is what I had in mind too, I never knew that the Goal Seek option was even there!
@@Dan_Gilpin A quick bit of algebraic manipulation is suitable here, but if you want to optimize across multiple criteria, you'd be best off going with Solver. (Goalseek can only optimize for one variable.)
Awesome tips! Here are a couple notes on Question 3 and 4:
For Question 3, you can use Solver, rather than Goal Seek. Using Solver, you can create a parameter on the 'Units' sold to be an integer. That way you don't have to do the roundup formula at the end.
For Question 4, you can use sumproduct for the second formula. =SUMPRODUCT(--($B$11:$B$22 = $B7), --($C$11:$C$22 = C$5), $F$11:$F$22). Then copy/paste across (Or Shift right and Ctrl R as you mention). Unfortunately, I would have to count points against someone for using any 'lookup' type of formula when summing numbers (even an Xlookup).
Is there a way you can show the exact formula so those not so familiar can better understand it? Thanks! 😊
True, in this dataset the couple CountryDate is unique so it is fine to find only the first match, but if there could be multiple rows for France and January arguably the question would want the sum of all matches not just the first one. The sum is conceptually superior. But then SUMIFS is the only elegant option, SUMPRODUCT is clever use of Boolean arithmetics but isn’t very readable.
@@counterleo Once you get used to sumproduct, it's not too bad. In certain analytics departments, sumproduct is heavily used and preferred to sumifs as sumproduct is at least 1.5x more efficient at calculating on large data sets (or at least this used to be the case).
@@beezmemoire9376 The Solver is a tool in excel (add-ins --> solver). I did show the sumproduct formula above. basically you put in a criteria like shown for B11:B22 and then equals to what you are trying to map to (in this case, b7). You can repeat this as many times as you want, just put a comma, then 2 dashes, then open parentheses, and do another check. when you get to the what you are actually trying to sum (like the 'sum range' in sumifs) you don't do the double dashes or parentheses (F11:F22 in my example above).
@@mattb8135 Would also recommend cleaning up the formula a bit:
=SUMPRODUCT(
--($B$11:$B$22 = $B7),
--($C$11:$C$22 = C$5),
$F$11:$F$22
)
I work as an investment analyst and this actually taught me a lot 😂
My friend at work is a whiz at excel. He created a formula at an old job that made us run thru jobs faster, which pretty much eliminated a job altogether. Though I don’t want to eliminate jobs where I work, I do work with 95% all licensed engineers, and I’m just a guy with a cubicle making autoCAD/Revit drawings for them.
Though I would like to elevate my excel game to make our jobs easier and/or impress my boss so I can start making the big bucks!
The last formula of using the xlookup is awesome 👍, I was thinking about using the formulas (sum + filter)
Thanks for sharing 🙂
4:59, I can't believe there is a tool for this 🙂. I paused first to try and get the number of sales myself, and this is how I got it: (Fixed cost + 5000) / (Price per shirt - Cost per unit)
I wish I had these videos available when I was doing interview prep. Nice work Kenji!
Thank you!
Hi Michael
Hope you are Good, please I would like to learn more from you because I know you would have experience concerning an interview
I like this kind of videos. Thank you for putting these videos.
Xlookup formula will not work if you have multiple values for the month.
I will use for 2nd formula as below
=SUMPRODUCT((Country=“France”)*(Date=“Jan-23”)*Revenue)
Here Country, Date & Revenue are the ranges
France & Jan-23 are dynamic values
He made it work no ? I didn't know x lookup so I'd like to understand more what you're saying
In his example there was one and only one record for each Country and Month, which is fine. But say you have multiple records for the same date and country, xlookup will return only the first match to encounter. sumif will do it correctly.
So using xlookup is not a good example really, since there is a silent assumption made on how the underlying data is structured.
@@evensteven9111 thanks. That was very clear !
Check out this updated Excel Test video for 2024: ua-cam.com/video/E4t43Bx7XvY/v-deo.html
1.Highlight in red 10 Lowest
2.2 Conditions -IF(And
3.Break Even sales (Qty)-Use Goal seek
4.2 Different Formulas with 2 conditions as Horizontal & vertical- SumIFS( and Xlook up (& ) for second condition.
Fun video for self-assessment! My two formulas were Xlookup using the & (I learned this months ago and it's one of my favorite FAVORITE functions in excel to-date!) and then a filter formula using two criteria in the filter by using the asterisks functionality in the criteria "($B$11:$B$22=$B7)*($C$11:$C$22=C$5)". Thanks for the engaging content!
Thank you for explaining these concepts in a way that is open and encourages learning, your user friendly approach helps me understand and implement these with my work - thank you!
🤯 I did not know about the "&" for the xlookup formula, I thought you could only nest xlookup to search multiple criteria Thank you Sir, i sincerely appreciate you sharing :)
Ditto! My brain says no way does & work like that…guess now I’ll have to try it for myself. 🤷♂️
I’m an Excel newbie and got the first two right. That last one was 🤯 for me.
Your videos have helped me so much during this week! Wonderful work explaining things in a simple manner. I can't thank you enough!😁🌼
Hi anra
For last question, Xlookup doesn't give the sum for selected criteria rather it will through the first matching result. In the table we have only one entry for each month for france so the answer was matching otherwise not.
Haven’t taken excel training in years. I didn’t forget anything thankfully.
I would use SUMPRODUCT on Q4. I think it's safer because it would work with multiple input of the same month and country.
This is the way. It's also good to put your criteria in parenthesis with '--' before, like this --(x=y), which converrts the true/false output to 1/0 output making matrix multiplication smoother.
I had SUMIF and SUMPRODUCT as well.
Like with many things, there's multiple ways of getting to the right answer. As long as one gets there within the constraints applied and time required, then it's all good!
Best and most clear vids on Excel by far. Thanks Kenji-san.
Dang that first question was the hardest would have never known about it without this video.
I'm old school, I don't know these new functions, my results would have seemed more clunky but it would have got the job done. For the 3rd it's a calculation formula. For the last sumifs I didn't know and I didn't know xlookup. My degree was 20+ years ago and I don't work professionally in any IT based positions but I've kept my mind sharp. For the last I'd have done an if and if set up and second the same rather than nesting the and but otherwise. The good thing is it's showing me for all I know I can still know more. I'm sure an updated course could bring me back up to speed. Thanks for the video.
cool, like the test. didnt know about the goal seek tool.
for last task when using xlookup for multiple criteria i like to use this format as i find it easy to visualise:
xlookup(1,(range1=criteria1)*(range2=criteria2),return range)
so in your example it would be: xlookup(1,($B$11:$B$22=$B7)*($C$11:$C$22=C5),$F$11:$F$22)
helps when the data is in a table too.
Question 3
I would use an adaptive formula that will always work, even if you change the Assumptions table:
=ROUNDUP((C8/(-C7+C6))+(5000/(C6-C7)),0)
🙂
Thanks for your videos! @Kenji Explains
Greetings from Moscow)
i would replace the 5000 with a link to another tab's calculation for the fixed costs, as numbers hardcoded in formulas is not best practice
@@robertcasey1708 Exactly. My bad. Hate fixed numbers as well. :)
that could be simplified a lot, to =ROUNDUP((C8+5000)/(C6-C7),0)
@@LTJchrisRBF Hey! Not bad! I didn't check your formula, but it seems I missed some lectures on algebra :)
But you still forgot about the fixed 5k :)
(I know I'm a terrible person) :)
@@Kalachoffit’s in there c8 + 5000
great to find you! 🙏🙏🙏, you are a blessing, being now unemployed, I cant afford paying a Microsoft certificate training session. As long as I am updated, with the newest version and features. This helps a lot! looking forward to Word, Outlook, ppt..Thanks a lot!
I got 3 out of 4, but question 4 actually wasn’t the question I missed. I am actually extremely familiar with using lookup or match with multiple criteria, and in fact I believe there is a third viable formula you could use. However I have never used the What-If Analysis feature before, let alone the Goal-Seek tool. Maybe the test administrator could guide me to it like in the video, because I understood how it worked almost instantly. But I don’t know if that would have counted for a point or not.
EDIT - A WORD OF CAUTION AGAINST USING A CONCATENATED ARRAY THAT I JUST EXPERIENCED THIS MORNING: If you are looking for criteria that are represented by numbers (for example I was looking to find a match for 1&21) you may find a false match for 12&1! Both evaluate to 121, so the match with the smaller row number will be selected, which was giving me an incorrect result!
I find it much safer to use conditional statements multiplied together when I’m working with multiple criteria.
For me question 1 to 3 was fine. Knew it before he started. On Q4, the first one, Sumifs, I got, but I would use a formula different to the Xlookup. Interesting how all sorts of ways to get to the same result.
You may know this but for those who don't, sumproduct with three arrays evaluated to 1/0 does this easily. =sumproduct(array1, array2, array 3). Array1 would be countryrange=country, if you wrap it in parenthesis with --() it becomes 1/0: --($B11:$B22=$B6). Similarly the date lookup is --($C11:$C22=C$5). lastly the revenue is just the revenue array. To make life even easier, name the arrays.
Then your sumproduct will look like this: =sumproduct(--(country=$B6),--(month=C$5),revenue) In essence, this runs a bunch of AND statements on each row in the multiplied arrays, so it will return 1 * 1 * revenue if everything matches, and return 0 if any criteria don't match, then adds them all up.
@@adamwolach This is was precisely what I meant when I said there was a third viable formula, as well as when I said “multiplying conditional statements together”.
You won't have and shouldn't. Define the dataset and build the formula once, done.
Giving defined names to cells, your formula bar should just have...
=ROUNDUP((FixedCosts+SaleTarget)/SaleProfit),0)
And that way if you get hit by a bus on the way to work, the work experience kid can read exactly what you did and life goes on...not for you, the business.
You can load that up wherever you want for any product you want. Targets and costs can change and it'll just keep showing the correct figure. Job done once in a minute, never do it again. Querying the data and it'll be showing the correct adjusted figure when the file opens. That's literally all that Excel feature is doing, but you don't have to fiddle around with it every time.
Always understand these kind of Excel features. Never use them unless one-off and it's fine to make a quick mess because the workbook is going to get deleted in a minute after.
@@adamwolach I'd have tables with 'colHeader' defined and paste this formula in every cell...
=SUM(FILTER(
Sales[Revenue],
(Sales[Country]=[@Country]) *
(Sales[Date]=colHeader),
0))
And then if the manager wants any other variables like sales over 1000, just slap another line in...
=SUM(FILTER(
Sales[Revenue],
(Sales[Country]=[@Country]) *
(Sales[Date]=colHeader) *
(Sales[Quantity]>1000),
0))
All of these were really easy. Excel just feels extremely simple if you're doing any sort of technical work day-to-day. Will continue to take a while to phase out as those in functional areas continue to resist change but eventually Excel will be a thing of the past.
Really loved this exercise. Thanks much. Also the sample excel file helps a ton to speed up the process if you want to do it yourself. One note though for those using excel online, the What If Analysis option is not available there.....
Thank you for showing the short keys. I keep forgetting f4 so you showing it really helps
Regarding Question 4 just use a Pivot Table with a filter. Since I learned about Pivot Tables back in 2009 it made so many things way easier 🙂
Only, that its not the Solution to the question.
The task is to use two different formulas.
This is not about this special use case but about how you understand and tackle the task and how you unterstand the way excel formulas work and if you can think around the corner…
I will give myself a 3.5. I didn't know about anding two variables or arrays in the xlookup function. Learn something new everyday.
I would have used ab index match for the last one but I haven’t been taught the xlookup, it’s amazing what excel can do!
Great video. Xlookup with multiple conditions is a new learning. I guess SUMIFs is easy when there are multiple criteria's and an aggregation needs to be performed. Xlookup is useful only when the values are not repeated in the table.
Thanks! I learned so much from this.
Well done, Kenji. Thank you for this especially xlookup's multip[le criteria. Scored 3/4.
I didn't know you could do this with the XLOOKUP function. Wow!😅 Learnt something new.
I got all correct except the 2nd formula where & was used to add 2nd criteria. Thank you very much!
Haven't got ot use the xlookup and goalseek but everything else i knew. Always have to keep learning with excel. Excel is a very powerful tool when you know how to use it
I used to set an interview test when looking for trainers in an IT centre. It was to recreate an IDENTICAL table in EACH of the Office suite, including identical formatting. This was 25 years ago without instant tools. Of many candidates I found ONE. The only one who had been formally trained, not self- taught. To get the best out of software, and not make catastrophic mistakes, is to get a formal training.
this might be true 25 years ago but nowadays self training is more than adequate haha
@@ttsait my recent experience of self taught (in schools) is that I still receive documents which have been created “visually” , which when moved or imported “jump about” and need a global formatting to be of any use! The basics are missing! I am sure your courses are great. We just need more people to train!!!!
My engineering program had an excel mastery course as part of the major, but at my first job out of college, they were more concerned with my trig skills over excel, even though many of us use this program 90% of the day logging data lol! It def pays to know this.
I used the SUMIFS recently and it was an absolute nightmare because i was dealing with data about dates... yours was way easier because you just had to confront text. I had to set a condition to determine if a date was before or after another one. Again, a nightmare.
If you needed months, why dind't you do (month(array)). Excel goes really easy these days with such formulas.
Something to note about CTRL-SHIFT-(ARROW KEY)
I remember when I learned this, changed my working life. But know this: it ONLY goes until a blank cell. If you have blanks, it'll stop there. Just keep tapping the arrow of the direction you're going to bypass it.
ctrl + end/ctrl + shft + end bypasses blanks and takes you to the last row of a block of adjacent cells. if you are trying to highlight columns, you can then just use the left arrow to go back to the column/s you want to highlight if ctrl/shft/end takes you too far right.
I had no idea F4 was a shortcut to lock columns (and could be cycled between hard-lock, horizontal and vertical lock). Absolute game chager
Amazing. Please make more videos like this
I got the first three right. But the last one taught me something new..🎉
In q3, we can calculate it using the Cost-Volume-Profit formula : (fxc+p)/cm per unit. (15k+5k)/(29.99-8.50) = 930.7 or 931 units.
In the third case it would be much more efficient to use a formula instead; our target is C8 + 5000 >= Units * (C6 - C7), or target = C8 + 5K / (C6 - C7) which would resolve to 20,000 / 21.49 = 931 units sold to hit the target. This would give you not only a target, but also a very easy template to then use later on
As an analyst, I agree with other comments about Q2 but I see if from a different perspective and I contend that Kenji may have gotten it wrong himself.
Extrapolating the minimum requirements of $500k revenue and $25k profit will result in a 5% margin (25/500). From Kenji's answer, Projects B and C are rejected due to them being less than $500k revenue, however Project B has an incredible 78% margin (over 15 times better than the minimum) and Project C's margin is 15.5% which is over three times better than the Minimum requirement.
this makes sense! how would you have approached it?
@@chrisadeniyi4 I would have added an extra cell in H8 that calculated the target margin is 5% . I'd keep the column E formulae but I would then add an extra column in F5 down calculating the margin for each row and highlighting those with a margin > 5%. I would then Add one more column with the Decision to be either "Reject" or "Accept based on margin".
Technically, Kenji's answer is correct if the hiring manager just wants to see if you know how to write formula, my answer is arguably correct if they want someone who can provide a full analysis so better decisions can be made
@@vk2himsuperb! very detail oriented process 👏🏿 and it’s a better way to achieve the desired outcome
Cute. I got everything right except the 4b part.. Never knew you could add multiple criteria for xlookup. thanks for this
I think im buying the course. I felt so behind in all of them. I remember excel from my School Of Business college days but man that was just to get some hw and projects done.
I am an IGCSE ICT and A-level IT in a Cambridge school. And proudly I can say I could solve all of the without seeing the answers! Thank you for this video. It motivating me to do more challenges and improve myself more.
Need this type of more videos. so much love for this work.
The & on the xlookup was very useful, will definetly use it in the future
this is so helpful thanks for creating and i look forward to the next one! blessings!
To be fair, in the 2nd exercise I'm 100% accepting project B, screw the formula.
ahahaha good intro! Good practice for us newbies into the interview environment. Thanks Kenji!
Thanks for making such informative videos
Thanks for watching!
@@KenjiExplains hi I've just completed my articleship and i want to go so long in finance, through your video I create my resume and applied some to best summer analyst program. Till now there is no response from their side but I'm trying some better will come surely. Till now I want to work on my skill and also
I've many more to ask and need somewhere your guidance where I can contact to u.
Regarding question 2, if I were hiring, I'd be looking for the applicant that could do the excel work, but who would also see beyond the numbers on the screen, and would actually question the question.
Obviously, the criteria for acceptance should be changed. Any intelligent business would not reject Project B, instead they would choose it as the first project to accept.
This. I had the advantage that I was a qualified accountant and not a qualified IT [though I was the go-to IT person in my section] and when I saw that level of profit I immediately thought the chosen criteria were not good business.
You are such an Educator angel.❤❤❤❤❤❤
The Patagonia while you're playing the hiring manager is too funny.
hahaha glad you noticed XD
3.5/4 I did not come up with a second way to do the last question, good brain exercise if you have not thought about excel in a bit.
Would you consider the use of sumproduct with the date as a boolean to be a "different" formula than sumifs? In principle, they're the same, but it's certainly a different function...
Clever use of booleans as coefficients. I’d give it credit
Regarding question 3, using the Goalseeker function leaves unanswered whether a candidate understands how to do a break-even / profit calculation in the first place, which is arguably the more important question, I would say. In other words, what's the point of being good at using Excel functions if one doesn't understand how something should be calculated correctly in the first place?!
With respect to question 4 I would use a pivot table. The data set in this example is small, in reality this kind of questions usually pertain to large sets of data. Pivots are easier to check for errors and also easier to change. Once users of information get a question answered, they tend to ask follow-up question and in many other cases these are monthly exercises where the number of records change, while the nature of the data stays the same (in which case you have to change all the ranges using formulas mentioned here, while pivots automatically take care of the number of rows)
The profit question can also be done algebraically. If you know profit = (price - cost) x quantity - 15000, then you can solve for the quantity at profit 5000 as quantity = (5000 + 15000)/(price - cost) which gives the same answer as above :)
Great video! Could you maybe explain this scenario: you have a project budget, and you need to move 5% from one budget line to another.? How to accomplish that? I had this task on one of my job tests. Thank you in advance!
Very helpful video! Thank you for your content as always. Love your channel.
Very insightful 🙌
You are a great, great teacher. I hope you know that. Thank you.
Really useful for my interview prep!!! Cheers
Thank you Kenji. Great stuff
I got 2 of 4 questions correct, 3 I would have solved in some other way instead of Goal seeker. 4th really taught me my current understanding about Excel.😅
The real test of Question 2 is whether or not you realize how silly it would be to actually reject Project B.
On the last one the xlookup will only return a correct result if there's only one entry for France in each month. If there is a second entry you'll want to stick with the sumifs.
If i had an interview on this, I think I'd have better results explaining that than I would by actually running an xlookup.
It's funny that even though I would consider myself a relatively advanced Excel user there are still features of it that I have never used (like Goal Seek, I've never once used that). I guess it's because as much as I like using Excel it's still just a handy tool to me as opposed to something really necessary to do my job. I don't use it to solve problems or analyze data, I usually just use it to take care of otherwise very tedious tasks.
Perfect score. This was too easy
I have very limited knowledge of excel and I don’t use it for my job. I have no idea what I’m doing here but I still watched the whole thing 😂
Nice I didn't know about the "&" hack for Xlookup. That's super cool that will actually help me out a bit! I use Python increasingly for my data needs, but I still use google sheets/excel regularly for smaller data sets! That will help!
Okay young man, share this with my secretary and assistants who are involved in such things
I will accept Project B, from the second question, everyday of the week
Hello Kenji, could you make a video explaining the use of f4 ?
Great explanations- thank you!
I'm learning a lot! thanks!
Would love to take up your course, too expensive for me. But I hope people take it up, you are amazing.
I would definitely accetp the Project B. That's a big margin, but then the exercise was more on excel kill not on qualitative assessment
Xlookup part was really great to learn ❤❤❤😊
Question 2, I know this is just on the formula but I would expect an analyst to query the minimum requirements at a glance for Project B.
If they moved on without having any comments I wouldn’t consider it a pass.
why in Q4 the index match method doesn't work? i saw one of your previous videos and it worked
thank you!
Thanks for the tutorial. For some reason, I don't understand the cell locking part with the F4 key. I need to understand how it can be done
I consider myself a capable user, (Decent with Formulas, VBA, and Power Query)
not necessarily a master but good enough that anyone who doesn't really know how to use excel could think I was
ended up getting 3/4
didn't know u could do SUMIF like that, normally i'd just use helper columns
Thank you this was very helpful :)
3.5/5 xlookup is tricky for me. Great explanation here, thank you!
It is, but the real world you would just use a pivot table I guess, takes 10 seconds
@@counterleo for reporting yes, pivot table but if you want to be operating that table for linking to other tables and things like that, I guess it is better to have formulas.
Great content, Kenji!
very very good video, more like this questions pls or direct me for website so I can practice in excel and analysis
I try in Question no4 to use filter function and it works
thank U for this amazing Channel