Practical Tips Search Results

How To: Match plane's aspect ratio to an image in Blender

In this tip video, you'll see how to set the aspect ratio of a plane object to match that of the image mapped to it. This is important to prevent distortion in the mapped image. This knowledge will be helpful when using image planes for cutout trees and people, instanced image planes for particle effects, and any situation where you need non-distorted images on plane objects. Whether you're new to the Blender Foundation's popular open-source 3D computer graphics application or are a seasoned ...

How To: Clean up imported 3D models in Blender

It is quite common for imported models to come into Blender with duplicate vertices and triangulated faces. This quick tip demonstrates how to very easily fix these two issues, leaving you with a model that is ready to go. Whether you're new to the Blender Foundation's popular open-source 3D computer graphics application or are a seasoned digital artist merely on the lookout for new tips and tricks, you're sure to be well served by this free video software tutorial from the folks at CG Cookie...

How To: Create a three-point lighting rig in Blender

A good lighting setup is essential to effectively displaying your model. Without it your hard work might as well be for nothing. This tutorial takes a look at how to make a good three-point (+) lighting setup in Blender. The tutorial covers the different kinds of lights within Blender, the different configurations needed, and some general tips and tricks to creating a good setup within Blender. Whether you're new to the Blender Foundation's popular open-source 3D computer graphics application...

How To: Control edge flows in Blender

When working with a high density mesh in Blender, maintainig a firm grip on topology is essential. This quick video demonstrates a few tips for increasing/decreasing your topology in a given area and for redirecting the flow of your topology. Whether you're new to the Blender Foundation's popular open-source 3D computer graphics application or are a seasoned digital artist merely on the lookout for new tips and tricks, you're sure to be well served by this free video software tutorial from th...

How To: Create threaded models with Blender's screw modifier

In this quick Blender 2.5 video tip, you'll see how you can use the Screw modifier to quickly create threaded objects or springs. This method is non-destructive and very quick to use. Whether you're new to the Blender Foundation's popular open-source 3D computer graphics application or are a seasoned digital artist merely on the lookout for new tips and tricks, you're sure to be well served by this free video software tutorial from the folks at CG Cookie. For more information, including step-...

How To: Create a 3D model of a screw in Blender

This is a quick tip on how to model a screw within Blender. But more so on covering the “threading” of the screw itself. Whether you're new to the Blender Foundation's popular open-source 3D computer graphics application or are a seasoned digital artist merely on the lookout for new tips and tricks, you're sure to be well served by this free video software tutorial from the folks at CG Cookie. For more information, including step-by-step instructions, take a look!

How To: Render an infinite ground plane in Blender

This clip goes through process of setting up a infinite ground plane with shadows to better display your models within Blender. The tip also looks at a couple of tweaks while using Ambient Occlusion to adjust the shadows. Whether you're new to the Blender Foundation's popular open-source 3D computer graphics application or are a seasoned digital artist merely on the lookout for new tips and tricks, you're sure to be well served by this free video software tutorial from the folks at CG Cookie....

How To: Cut a whole in a curved mesh in Blender

Cutting a hole into a curved mesh is a common problem, particularly for new modelers. This tip shows you how to go about doing it using Blender's retopology tools. Whether you're new to the Blender Foundation's popular open-source 3D computer graphics application or are a seasoned digital artist merely on the lookout for new tips and tricks, you're sure to be well served by this free video software tutorial from the folks at CG Cookie. For more information, including step-by-step instructions...

How To: Add fiscal year sales in Microsoft Excel

New to Microsoft Excel? Looking for a tip? How about a tip so mind-blowingly useful as to qualify as a magic trick? You're in luck. In this MS Excel tutorial from ExcelIsFun, the 617th installment in their series of digital spreadsheet magic tricks, you'll learn how see a SUMIFS and SUMPRODUCT functions formula to sum the fiscal year's sales when the year does not end on December 31st. Also see a formula for year-over-year percentage change.

How To: Count unique items in a list in Microsoft Excel

New to Microsoft Excel? Looking for a tip? How about a tip so mind-blowingly useful as to qualify as a magic trick? You're in luck. In this MS Excel tutorial from ExcelIsFun, the 622nd installment in their series of digital spreadsheet magic tricks, you'll learn about a robust formula for counting unique items in a list using the SUMPRODUCT, COUNTIF and an array formula component. You'll also see an array formula that uses SUM, IF, FREQUENCY, MATCH and ROWS functions to achieve the same.

How To: Highlight rows that contain unique values in MS Excel

New to Microsoft Excel? Looking for a tip? How about a tip so mind-blowingly useful as to qualify as a magic trick? You're in luck. In this MS Excel tutorial from ExcelIsFun, the 621st installment in their series of digital spreadsheet magic tricks, you'll learn how to write a logical formula using the AND and COUNTIFS functions with mixed cell references in the conditional formatting dialog box to highlight entire row (whole record) in data set (table) when record is unique and matches the s...

How To: Return only even row data in an MS Excel spreadsheet

New to Microsoft Excel? Looking for a tip? How about a tip so mind-blowingly useful as to qualify as a magic trick? You're in luck. In this MS Excel tutorial from ExcelIsFun, the 622nd installment in their series of digital spreadsheet magic tricks, you'll learn how to to write an array formula using the SUMPRODUCT, MOD, IF, ROWS, INDEX, SMALL, and ROW functions that will retreive only even row values.

How To: Return multiple items by array formula in MS Excel

New to Microsoft Excel? Looking for a tip? How about a tip so mind-blowingly useful as to qualify as a magic trick? You're in luck. In this MS Excel tutorial from ExcelIsFun, the 609th installment in their series of digital spreadsheet magic tricks, you'll learn how to use the COUNTIF, IF, COLUMNS, INDEX, TEXT, SMALL and COLUMN functions in an array formula to return multiple items (e.g., list free periods for a list of students).

How To: Run lookup queries with two values in Microsoft Excel

New to Microsoft Excel? Looking for a tip? How about a tip so mind-blowingly useful as to qualify as a magic trick? You're in luck. In this MS Excel tutorial from ExcelIsFun, the 606th installment in their series of digital spreadsheet magic tricks, you'll learn how to write a formula that can look up two 2 lookup values using the INDEX & MATCH functions and concatenated (joined) columns for the lookup value and lookup table.

How To: Fill in missing column values with Excel's IF function

New to Microsoft Excel? Looking for a tip? How about a tip so mind-blowingly useful as to qualify as a magic trick? You're in luck. In this MS Excel tutorial from ExcelIsFun, the 605th installment in their series of digital spreadsheet magic tricks, you'll learn how to use the IF function to fill in column with missing values then use Paste Special Values to create the final column with correct values. Also see three methods for Paste Special Values.

How To: Calculate hours worked in days in Microsoft Excel

New to Microsoft Excel? Looking for a tip? How about a tip so mind-blowingly useful as to qualify as a magic trick? You're in luck. In this MS Excel tutorial from ExcelIsFun, the 598th installment in their series of digital spreadsheet magic tricks, you'll learn how to create a formula to calculate hours worked given an in time, an out time and an in and out time for the lunch break. Learn about how time in Excel is the proportion of one 24 hour day.

How To: Calculate sales using a compact array formula in Excel

New to Microsoft Excel? Looking for a tip? How about a tip so mind-blowingly useful as to qualify as a magic trick? You're in luck. In this MS Excel tutorial from ExcelIsFun, the 602nd installment in their series of digital spreadsheet magic tricks, you'll learn how to create a compact array formula that can total sales with 1 criteria when the database does not have a price or total sales column. See how SUMIF can be used to lookup values and simulate a missing column from a database.

How To: Extract the word that occurs most frequently in Excel

New to Microsoft Excel? Looking for a tip? How about a tip so mind-blowingly useful as to qualify as a magic trick? You're in luck. In this MS Excel tutorial from ExcelIsFun, the 592nd installment in their series of digital spreadsheet magic tricks, you'll learn how to extract word that occurs most frequently from a column of survey results that contain customer preferences for a product using the INDEX, MATCH, MAX and COUNTIF functions. This is a way to get the MODE for data that is made up ...

How To: Fix a DGET #NUM! error in Microsoft Excel

New to Microsoft Excel? Looking for a tip? How about a tip so mind-blowingly useful as to qualify as a magic trick? You're in luck. In this MS Excel tutorial from ExcelIsFun, the 595th installment in their series of digital spreadsheet magic tricks, you'll learn how to resolve a problem that the DGET function and advanced filter have with criteria and duplicates. See how to switch to either the VLOOKUP function or not criteria for advanced filter.

How To: Randomly select a name from a list in Microsoft Excel

New to Microsoft Excel? Looking for a tip? How about a tip so mind-blowingly useful as to qualify as a magic trick? You're in luck. In this MS Excel tutorial from ExcelIsFun and Mr. Excel, the 11th installment in their joint series of digital spreadsheet magic tricks, you'll learn how to create a formula that will randomly select a name from a list of names without having the list of names sitting in cells.

How To: Use VLOOKUP queries inside of an MS Excel IF function

New to Microsoft Excel? Looking for a tip? How about a tip so mind-blowingly useful as to qualify as a magic trick? You're in luck. In this MS Excel tutorial from ExcelIsFun, the 588th installment in their series of digital spreadsheet magic tricks, you'll learn how to determine whether an employee is exempt from a tax using a VLOOKUP in an IF function, and if not use a second VLOOKUP lookup query to look in tax tables to look up and calculate the tax

How To: Make an Excel formula for a decimal stem & leaf chart

New to Microsoft Excel? Looking for a tip? How about a tip so mind-blowingly useful as to qualify as a magic trick? You're in luck. In this MS Excel tutorial from ExcelIsFun, the 589th installment in their series of digital spreadsheet magic tricks, you'll learn how to create an array formula for a stem and leaf chart for decimal numbers using the IF, COLUMNS, SUMPRODUCT, INDEX, INT, RIGHT, SMALL, ROW and TEXT functions.

How To: Clean your Jordans and make them look like new

In this Beauty & Style video tutorial you will learn how to clean your Jordans and make them look like new. There is nothing complicated about this process. You will need alcohol, seaglow, cloth, cotton, 9 tips, sponge, dish soap in a cup with water, old tooth brush and a water hose. With the tips remove anything stuck inside the grooves on the sole. Scrub alcohol with cotton on the sole of the shoe and the dirt comes off instantly. Scrub it with toothbrush to remove dirt from the grooves and...

How To: Extract only numbers from a text string array forumla

New to Microsoft Excel? Looking for a tip? How about a tip so mind-blowingly useful as to qualify as a magic trick? You're in luck. In this MS Excel tutorial from ExcelIsFun, the 489th installment in their series of digital spreadsheet magic tricks, you'll learn how to extract only the numbers from a text string. This is accomplished with recourse to Excel's LEN, INDIRECT, ROW, MID, ISNUMBER, INDEX, LARGE, SUMPRODUCT, and SUM functions.

How To: Use VLOOKUP to verify a record is in an Excel table

New to Microsoft Excel? Looking for a tip? How about a tip so mind-blowingly useful as to qualify as a magic trick? You're in luck. In this MS Excel tutorial from ExcelIsFun, the 558th installment in their series of digital spreadsheet magic tricks, you'll learn how to check if a record is in a table using VLOOKUP. See how to do this for a 2 column (field) table and a 4 column (field) table. See also how to add a concatenated column and concatenate lookup_value in VLOOKUP function.

How To: Look up formulas in Excel with the CHOOSE function

New to Microsoft Excel? Looking for a tip? How about a tip so mind-blowingly useful as to qualify as a magic trick? You're in luck. In this MS Excel tutorial from ExcelIsFun, the 557th installment in their series of digital spreadsheet magic tricks, you'll learn how to use the CHOOSE function look up a formula or function depending on your drop-down selection. See also how to create combo box form controls and data validation lists with the VLOOKUP function.

How To: Create a two-variable data table in Microsoft Excel

New to Microsoft Excel? Looking for a tip? How about a tip so mind-blowingly useful as to qualify as a magic trick? You're in luck. In this MS Excel tutorial from ExcelIsFun, the 255th installment in their series of digital spreadsheet magic tricks, you'll learn how to create a two-variable data table in Excel for what-if analysis. See the PMT function and learn about the formula equivalent to a data table.

How To: Quickly create columns of words & numbers in MS Excel

New to Microsoft Excel? Looking for a tip? How about a tip so mind-blowingly useful as to qualify as a magic trick? You're in luck. In this MS Excel tutorial from ExcelIsFun, the 390th installment in their series of digital spreadsheet magic tricks, you'll learn how to create a column of words and numbers quickly with two different formulas as well a a mouse trick that will allow you to paste special values.

How To: Delete only cell content or formatting in MS Excel

New to Microsoft Excel? Looking for a tip? How about a tip so mind-blowingly useful as to qualify as a magic trick? You're in luck. In this MS Excel tutorial from ExcelIsFun, the 575th installment in their series of digital spreadsheet magic tricks, you'll learn how to selectively delete. Specifically, you'll se how to delete the cell contents only, formatting only, the entire cell, or formatting and content together.

How To: Create dynamic ranges for formulas with Excel's OFFSET

New to Microsoft Excel? Looking for a tip? How about a tip so mind-blowingly useful as to qualify as a magic trick? You're in luck. In this MS Excel tutorial from ExcelIsFun, the 584th installment in their series of digital spreadsheet magic tricks, you'll learn how to use the OFFSET function and defined names to create dynamic ranges for formulas so formulas update each period when a new data dump (copy and paste) is completed.

How To: Build a conditional average calculation table in Exel

New to Microsoft Excel? Looking for a tip? How about a tip so mind-blowingly useful as to qualify as a magic trick? You're in luck. In this MS Excel tutorial from ExcelIsFun, the 583rd installment in their series of digital spreadsheet magic tricks, you'll learn how to use the AVERAGEIF & IFERROR functions with absolute and mixed cell references to create a large table of conditional average calculations (averaging with criteria).

How To: Fix the nine most common types of Excel errors

New to Microsoft Excel? Looking for a tip? How about a tip so mind-blowingly useful as to qualify as a magic trick? You're in luck. In this MS Excel tutorial from ExcelIsFun, the 582nd installment in their series of digital spreadsheet magic tricks, you'll learn how to understand and fix the nine most common formula errors in Microsoft Excel. Specifically, you'll learn how to interpret and resolve #######, #NAME?, #N/A, #REF!, #VALUE!, #NUM!, #DIV/0!, Circular Cell Reference, and #NULL! errors.

How To: Use comparative operators with letters in MS Excel

New to Microsoft Excel? Looking for a tip? How about a tip so mind-blowingly useful as to qualify as a magic trick? You're in luck. In this MS Excel tutorial from ExcelIsFun, the 386th installment in their series of digital spreadsheet magic tricks, you'll learn how to add conditional formatting for letters less than the letter M. Yes! Comparative operators like less than (<) work on letters!

How To: Format field names in Microsoft Excel

New to Microsoft Excel? Looking for a tip? How about a tip so mind-blowingly useful as to qualify as a magic trick? You're in luck. In this MS Excel tutorial from ExcelIsFun, the 378th installment in their series of digital spreadsheet magic tricks, you'll learn how to format field names. If field names have formatting, Excel understands that they are field names and should not be used as data.

How To: Create a dynamic area chart in Microsoft Excel

New to Microsoft Excel? Looking for a tip? How about a tip so mind-blowingly useful as to qualify as a magic trick? You're in luck. In this MS Excel tutorial from ExcelIsFun, the 351st installment in their series of digital spreadsheet magic tricks, you'll learn how to create an area chart for x and f(x) data as well as how to use the IF function to show a second data set plotted to show a specific area section.

How To: Randomly generate letters in an Excel spreadsheet

New to Microsoft Excel? Looking for a tip? How about a tip so mind-blowingly useful as to qualify as a magic trick? You're in luck. In this MS Excel tutorial from ExcelIsFun, the 18th installment in their series of digital spreadsheet magic tricks, you'll learn how to use the ROW, CHAR and RANDBETWEEN functions to randomly generate letters. See also how to randomly create letter sequences.

How To: Make an Excel gradebook that drops the 2 lowest scores

New to Microsoft Excel? Looking for a tip? How about a tip so mind-blowingly useful as to qualify as a magic trick? You're in luck. In this MS Excel tutorial from ExcelIsFun, the 196th installment in their series of digital spreadsheet magic tricks, you'll learn how to use the SUM, SMALL and VLOOKUP functions to create a gradebook (or grade book) based on a total score minus the two lowest scores.

How To: Make an Excel gradebook that removes the lowest score

New to Microsoft Excel? Looking for a tip? How about a tip so mind-blowingly useful as to qualify as a magic trick? You're in luck. In this MS Excel tutorial from ExcelIsFun, the 195th installment in their series of digital spreadsheet magic tricks, you'll learn how to use the SUM, MIN and VLOOKUP functions to create a grade book based on given total score that drops the lowest score and calculates grades automatically.