Did you know Excel for Office 365 has several add-ins? I've searched through
thousands of them to bring you the top 10 free add-ins available from the
Microsoft Store. To install add-ins in Excel for Office 365 just go to the
Insert tab and click on Get Add-ins. This brings up the Microsoft Store where you
can select from several different apps. Click on My Add-ins to see the list of
add-ins you've already installed. Let's get started with the top 10 free add-ins.
#1 Excel Colorizer. Excel Colorizer allows you to easily add color
patterns to your spreadsheet data. Start by highlighting an area of your
spreadsheet you want to colorize. Choose from four types of color styles. For
Uniform, select a color from the palette and click Colorize. It applies the color
to your highlighted data. You can also apply a pattern - Interlaced or Waves and
adjust the other settings accordingly. For the Vertical type choose a start and
end color and it applies the color gradient across the highlighted area
vertically. And as expected, Horizontal applies the color gradient in a
horizontal direction. Matrix combines both Vertical and
Horizontal gradient. One thing worth noting is that there is no remove color
option. To do that go to the Home tab and choose Clear Formats from this pull-down
menu. If you want to spice up your Excel spreadsheet use Excel Colorizer. It's
easy to use and it's free.
#2 - QR4Office. I recommended QR4Office for PowerPoint but it also works
great in Excel. It's the easiest way to add a QR code to your spreadsheet. Once
installed simply enter a URL, select your color and size, and insert it into your
spreadsheet. Now you can move and resize the image as needed. When you scan the QR
code from a mobile device it directs you to the URL. QR4Office lets you select
from multiple types of QR codes including URLs, mail addresses, phone
numbers, text messages, geo locations, or customize your own. If you need a QR code
in your spreadsheet use QR4Office.
#3 - Mini Calendar. Mini Calendar and Date Picker allows you to embed a
calendar into your spreadsheet for reference and for quickly entering dates.
Once installed it adds a calendar to your spreadsheet which you can position
anywhere. Select a cell and then select a date on the calendar to insert it
into your spreadsheet. You can also insert the current time. Click on this
icon to highlight a range of dates, hit OK, and it displays those dates in bold
on your calendar. Click on the menu in the upper right and you can Show as a
Saved Image.
There are several other settings to adjust the size, theme, calendar system,
show week numbers, and to hide the settings. Mini Calendar and Date Picker
is a great tool to make date management easier in Excel.
#4 - Places. Places is a quick reference guide showing public location
data from Foursquare. After installing just select a location in your
spreadsheet and it displays local information nearby. You can use cities,
states, countries, or other places of interest. Click on any of the locations
listed and it connects directly to Foursquare with more details. Places will
show public data even if you don't have a Foursquare account so give it a try.
#5 - People Graph. People Graph is a Microsoft add-in to show a table of
data visually. It opens with sample data. Click in the upper-right corner to bring
up the menu where you can change the title and select data from your
spreadsheet. It is designed for only two columns of data and ignores the headings
so just select the core data you want to graph. Now you can select settings from
the menu to pick from three different types of graphs, eight different themes,
and sixteen different shapes for your graph. It links to your data source and
any changes are reflected in the graph but you can convert it to an image from
the menu. People Graph is simplistic but it creates a visually pleasing
representation of your data that normally would take several more steps
in Excel. Check it out. #6 - Activity Timer.
Activity Timer measures the time you take for activities in Excel and lets
you place the recorded data into your spreadsheet. Once installed it shows up
on the Home tab. When you're ready to time your activities open it and add
your first activity. Give it a name and click Start to begin working on that
activity. You can Pause and continue the timer as you're working and when you're
done with that activity click Stop. Add a second activity and use Start, Pause, and
Stop again as needed. You may find that you need to return to a previous
activity and continue. Just click the + on that line.
This records a separate measurement of time for that activity and shows a
running average across the multiple recordings. At any point you can paste
the results of your activity measurements to excel. This shows the
times of each recording. As a helpful suggestion highlight the data, click on
the Quick Analysis Tool in the corner, select Totals, and this Sum if you want
to see all the totals. Activity Timer is a simple but useful tool if you need to
measure the time you spend on activities in Excel.
#7 - Bing Maps. Bing Maps is another add-in from Microsoft that lets you plot
location data and values from a table in Excel to a map. When added to your
spreadsheet it brings up a blank map. You can select the sample data if needed,
otherwise just highlight your data table including the headings and click the
Show Locations icon. It instantly plots your data points on the map at the
locations you specified. The circles are proportionate in size to the data values
from your table. Click the Settings icon to change the map view or pin colors.
If you have multiple data points you can also choose a pie chart for display.
As with other add-ins, you can show the map as a saved image. Bing Maps is a
slick add-in to represent your data as a map and it's completely free.
#8 - Remove Unwanted Characters. Remove Unwanted Characters is a helpful add-in
if you work with text in Excel and need to clean it of non-printable characters,
symbols, punctuation, or other unnecessary characters. Once it's installed you just
highlight a range of text and choose the option from the menu that you want to
clean. Hit Yes and it cleans out those numeric characters. You can remove text
characters and you can remove symbols and punctuation marks. You also have the
option of removing a custom character. It's designed to clean up the most
common annoyances with data, especially when you import text from an external
source. Just be aware that you don't want to use it on formulas. It will convert
them to text making them non-functional. Remove Uwanted Characters can be useful
for large volumes of messy text. #9 - Range Calculations. Range
Calculation applies basic math operations to a range of values in your
spreadsheet. Once installed just highlight a range of numbers and choose
the math operation you want to apply to them from the menu. Let's say we want to
add 20 to all these numbers. Calculate it and it instantly updates the entire
range. How about multiplying by 3.
You can also apply a percentage or add and subtract percentages from the values.
Range Calculations is really basic but it's quicker than creating formulas and
then copying and pasting the results to a new location in your spreadsheet so it
can save you some time, especially for large sets of data. #10 Power Pivot.
Power Pivot is an add-in you can use to perform powerful data analysis and
create sophisticated data models in Excel. Since Power Pivot has been around
for a while, it's not installed through the Microsoft Store interface like other
add-ins mentioned in this video. Instead go to File/Options/Add-ins and come down
here to the bottom and choose COM Add-ins and hit Go. Check this box for
Microsoft Power Pivot for Excel and hit OK.
This adds Power Pivot to your menu. Power Pivot lets you manage large data sets
from multiple sources such as SQL, Oracle, CSV files, websites, or data
already in Excel. Excel is normally limited to about 1 million rows but
Power Pivot is virtually unlimited. I've imported some data here as a sample to
give you an idea of what Power Pivot features look like. When you bring up the
Power Pivot menu there's a Manage option which brings in the data that you have
on your spreadsheet. If that's missing just click Add to Data Model and that
will bring the data in. You can also get data from external sources.
Once you've combined all this data you can now create different things like
pivot tables or pivot charts so if I want to do a pivot table just click this, go
to a new sheet, and now just like a normal Excel pivot table I can pull data
into this pivot table and see a summary of my data. Let's come back over here, go
to Manage. Let's pick Pivot Chart this time. We'll
create a new sheet. You have the same features available and it creates a
chart. One of the benefits of Power Pivot is its ability to create relationships
between your data elements. I won't go into detail but when you look at the
Diagram View you can add relationships to these tables. This allows you to
create very complex data analytics in both Pivot tables and Pivot charts.
Power Pivot is a very powerful add-in that you can use on large sets of data
imported from multiple location and that's why I wanted to share it as one
of the free add-ins for excel. Thanks for watching this video on the top ten Excel
free add-ins. I have several other Excel videos available at youtube.com/seletraining,
including tips and tricks for Excel and many other Office
365 applications. Take a look. Hey, if you want to see more
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