E. C. Nelson

The Correlation analysis tool in Excel (which is also available through the Data Analysis command) quantifies the relationship between two sets of data. You might use this tool to explore such things as the effect of advertising on sales, for example. To use the Correlation analysis tool, follow these steps:Click Data tabs Data Analysis command button.

You typically create a pivot chart by starting with the Create PivotChart Wizard. However, Excel also gives you the option of using the Insert Chart command on an existing pivot table. In Excel 2007 and Excel 2010, you use the PivotTable and PivotChart Wizard to create a pivot chart, but despite the seemingly different name, that wizard is the same as the Create PivotChart Wizard.

Excel provides an AutoFilter command that’s pretty cool. When you use AutoFilter, you produce a new table that includes a subset of the records from your original table. For example, in the case of a grocery list table, you could use AutoFilter to create a subset that shows only those items that you’ll purchase at Butchermans or a subset table that shows only those items that cost more than $2.

You can construct a custom AutoFilter. To do this, select the Text Filter command from the table menu and choose one of its text filtering options. No matter which text filtering option you pick, Excel displays the Custom AutoFilter dialog box. This dialog box enables you to specify with great precision what records you want to appear on your filtered list.

Excel provides a powerful method for retrieving information from external databases. You aren't limited to simply grabbing all the information from a specified table. You can, alternatively, query a database. By querying a database, you retrieve only information from a table that matches your criteria. You can also use a query to combine information from two or more tables.

One of the neatest ways to grab external data in Excel is through a web query. As you know if you’ve wasted any time surfing the web, Internet websites provide huge volumes of interesting data. Often, you’d like to grab this data and analyze it in some way. And fortunately, Excel provides an easy way to move such data from a web page into Excel.

The Data Analysis collection of tools in Excel includes an option for calculating rank and percentile information for values in your data set. Suppose, for example, that you want to rank the sales revenue information in this worksheet. To calculate rank and percentile statistics for your data set, take the following steps.

The Covariance tool, available through the Data Analysis add-in in Excel, quantifies the relationship between two sets of values. The Covariance tool calculates the average of the product of deviations of values from the data set means. To use this tool, follow these steps:Click the Data Analysis command button on the Data tab.

In Excel 2007 and Excel 2010, you use the PivotTable and PivotChart Wizard to create a pivot chart, but despite the seemingly different name, that wizard is the same as the Create PivotChart wizard. To run the Create PivotChart Wizard, take the following steps:Select the Excel table.To do this, just click in a cell in the table.