Fortunately, there’s a solution. Enter Excel add-ins: powerful tools designed to augment Excel’s capabilities and propel your spreadsheets to new heights.
In short, Excel add-ins can be a great way to boost your productivity and make your life easier. If you’re a regular spreadsheet user, it’s definitely worth exploring what add-ins are out there. There are hundreds on the market, covering a diverse range of functions.
Let’s explore five of the best and see how they can supercharge your spreadsheets.
Power Pivot
PowerPivot is a hidden gem within Excel that deserves a shout-out. An add-in that unlocks a whole new level of data analysis capabilities, PowerPivot goes beyond the limitations of traditional Excel spreadsheets, empowering you to work with massive datasets and create sophisticated data models.
With Power Pivot, you can import data from various sources like databases, flat files, and even other Excel workbooks. PowerPivot seamlessly combines this data into a single, unified model, allowing you to analyse information from diverse perspectives. Best of all, it’s completely free.
However, Power Pivot is exactly that — powerful! Newbie Excel users should note that it has a steeper learning curve compared to basic Excel features. On the plus side, there are lots of online resources and tutorials available to help you get started.
Fuzzy Lookup
True, Excel shines when working with clean, organised data, but real-world data often has inconsistencies. Typos, misspellings, and even slight variations can throw off standard lookup functions like VLOOKUP or HLOOKUP. This is where FuzzyLookup shines.
Made by Microsoft, Fuzzy Lookup is an Excel add-in that tackles untidy text data. It can find similar rows within one table, even if they’re not exactly identical. It can also match rows between two tables, even if there are typos, abbreviations, or slight wording changes.
Imagine you have customer names like “David Jones,” “Dave Joness” and “David J.” Fuzzy Lookup can recognise these as likely referring to the same person, even with the variations. It even provides a score to show how similar each match is.
Peltier Tech Charts
If you want to take your data visualisation skills to the next level, Peltier Tech Charts for Excel is an invaluable tool. It offers a wide range of chart types beyond Excel’s standard offerings, including Mekko charts and Sankey diagrams — ideal for portraying complex relationships between data points.
Additionally, the add-in provides advanced customisation options and superior data presentation capabilities, allowing you to really tell your data story.
However, consider the learning curve, compatibility, potential cost, and whether the advanced features align with your specific data presentation needs.
Kutools
Kutools for Excel is a popular add-in promising to streamline your workflow with a vast collection of tools. It offers a wide range of features designed to automate those repetitive tasks that often slow us down. From combining worksheets and merging cells to converting data formats and removing duplicates, Kutools can reduce the time spent on those oh-so tedious chores.
Users can also simplify complex formulas with Kutools’ built-in functions. Find specific values, count cells by colour, or perform advanced calculations with a few clicks, reducing the need for manual formula creation.
While Kutools boasts a vast library of features, it can be overwhelming for new users. It may take time to navigate the interface and identify the most relevant tools for your specific needs.
SEO Tools
SEOTools for Excel offers an intriguing option for businesses dipping their toes into the world of SEO. If you’re comfortable navigating Excel, SEOTools integrates seamlessly within your existing workflow. This eliminates the need to learn a completely new platform for basic SEO analysis.
Users can leverage their existing spreadsheet skills to simplify keyword research, competitor analysis, and on-page optimisation tasks directly within your spreadsheets.
That being said, compared to dedicated SEO tools, SEOTools offers a more basic feature set. It might not be suitable for in-depth technical SEO audits, backlink analysis, or competitor tracking.
Supercharge Your Spreadsheets: Add-Ins or No Add-Ins, EASA Delivers
While Excel add-ins offer a significant boost to spreadsheet functionality, there’s a limit to what they can achieve. They can’t eliminate the fundamental challenges when spreadsheets are shared. These challenges include version confusion, exposed intellectual property (IP), and disabled macros when sent over the internet. This is where EASA comes in.
EASA is a low-code application development platform specifically designed to allow the continued use of spreadsheets but without these limitations. Imagine taking all the power of your Excel add-ins, combined with the data manipulation capabilities of Excel spreadsheets, and wrapping them into a user-friendly, secure, web-based application. Ready to elevate your spreadsheet workflows? See how EASA can supercharge your spreadsheets.
