How do I analyse data in Excel?

When you export data from BizDiary the data is in a CSV format which can be read by Excel.  Excel (and other similar spreadsheet programs) offers a wide variety of ways of sorting, summarising, and analysing your data.

Once you open the data in Excel you can remove columns and rows, sort and filter, sum values, format the information, etc.

Once you’ve finished you need to save in Excel format (.xls), as CSV does not support formatting, calculations etc.

Example: Get a list of all customers seen by a particular personnel over the course of a year (exclude cancellations and no-shows).

This example continues on from the data exported in the How do I export data? article.

1. In Excel, open the export.csv file (or whatever you saved it as).
2. Remove unwanted columns. You probably only need to keep the customer, phone numbers, and email.
   Click on the column heading you want to remove, and while still holding the mouse down, drag across to select additional columns. Press [Ctrl] + [-] to delete the columns (or select Edit > Delete from the menu).
3. Click the top-left corner of the header area to select the entire worksheet.
4. From the menu, select Data > Sort.  Make sure Has header row is checked, and then select Customer and click on [OK].
5. From the menu, select Data > Filter > Advanced Filter.
6. Click on Unique records only, and then click [OK].

This example gives you a unique list of customers to work with.  You can copy to a separate sheet, or use as a source for emailing etc.

There are many other ways to work with the exported data.  For more information on Excel please refer to the help, or search for tutorials online.

see also...

• How do I export data?