This handout -- "Excel II - Beyond Simple Sorts and Filters" -- goes with a presentation by Linda J. Johnson at the Lexington, Kentucky, NewsTrain on Jan. 21, 2016. The slides from that presentation are called, "Data-Driven Enterprise off Your Beat." There is an additional handout, "Excel I - Sorting and Filtering," that also goes with that session. Other handouts distributed at the session are "Help with Obtaining Public Records," "How to Learn More about Data Journalism" and "Data-Driven Enterprise off Your Beat," all three by Ron Nixon, and "Excel Formulas - A Quick List," by Jaimi Dowdell. Linda J. Johnson is the former computer-assisted reporting coordinator for the Lexington Herald-Leader. NewsTrain is a training initiative of Associated Press Media Editors. More info: http://bit.ly/NewsTrain

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WHAT BEAT JOURNALISTS NEED TO KNOW SERIES
SPREADSHEETS -- Level II
Excel II – Beyond simple sorts and filters
SYMBOLS IN THIS HANDOUT
 This is a new area
 Click on the first word in the menu bar, then the second word listed.
Example: File  Save, then click again.
 Worth noting: A trick or tip I find especially helpful.
Data clean-up tips:
 Search and replace
 Separate data using the “text to columns” function
 Combining data using the “concatenate (&)” function
 Other useful text functions: proper case, if/then, countif
 Subtotals and collapsing and expanding a subtotal line
 If this, then … huh??:
1. Display only those salaries that are $100,000 or greater – without using a
custom filter. Solve this problem by creating a new column and using an IF
statement in a formula so that the results are part of the permanent data area,
unlike a custom filter.
 Use the Help function to locate the tip sheet for IF formulas.
2. How many people make more than $100,000? Hint: use the COUNTIF
function. =COUNTIF(C2:C3142,">100000")
 Subtotals:
 Sort your data the way you want it before using Data  Subtotals
1. Choose the field to group together, click sum, count, avg. or …
2. Select the field to add up, count, etc.

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3. Once you’ve clicked OK, notice the extra line in the data and the 1,2,3 on the
upper left side. Click the 2 to just see the subtotal rows.
4. Copy the subtotal or filter using Edit  Go To …  Special…Visible cells
only (then copy and paste what you want.
 Simple charts:
Trick: column order, sort order and highlighting make a difference; then F11.
 Not So Simple charts using the chart wizard.
 Working with dates and time.
1. Formatting cells and/or columns for date values. Excel can be difficult on
dates.
2. Calculate an age as of today’s date: new – old returns days. Divide by 365.4
(accounts for leap years).
 When numbers aren’t numbers:
1. Phone numbers, zip codes, unique identifiers, etc.
 Formulas
1. Percent of total:
Police budget: $28,000
Total city budget: $70,000
The question: What percentage of the total budget goes to the police department?
Formula: =(part/whole)*100
The pieces: Order of operation requires dividing the part (28,000) by the whole
(70,000). Multiply the result by 100, which moves the decimal two spaces to the left.
This is what it looks like in Excel: =(28000/70000)*100
Answer: The police department makes up 40% of the city’s budget.
2. Percent change:
2015 Police budget: 28,000
2010 Police budget: 25,000
The question: What is the difference between the two?
Formula: ((new-old)/old)*100
The pieces: Order of operation requires subtracting old number (25,000) from the new
number (28,000) first, then dividing by the old number again, and then multiplying by
100 for a percentage.
In Excel: =((28000-25000)/25000)*100
Answer: The police department’s budget increased 12% over 2010.