Excel users get ready. Today, I'm going to cover 10
useful Free Excel Add-ins you probably didn't know existed, like draw.io add-in to easily embed
mind maps or shop for layouts in your Excel file. There are many more like the calendar or an add-in
that quickly provides you with free macroeconomic data from different sources, directly in your Excel
file. Let's check them out. First of all, how do you install an add-in? You just need to open up your
Excel, then go to the Insert tab, Get Add-ins. You can search by name, browse by category. You're
going to see the different items pop up here, click on one to read more about it, and when you're
ready, just click on Add. So, the first add-in I want to cover with you is the Wikipedia add-in. Let's
quickly add that in. Read the license terms closely, and when you're happy, click on Continue. So, let's
say you're preparing a document and you want to grab some images and some additional information
from Wikipedia. This add-in makes it easy. Let's say we want to know more about Microsoft. We get the
entry pop up here. We can browse by the different sections, look through the different images that
are available, and if you want to add one to our document, we just need to click on it and drag and
drop it here. If we want to add some of the text here, so let's go back to sections, overview. Let's
say I want to add in this part to my document, I'm just going to select it, this "+" pops up, click
on that, and it's going to add it in to your sheet. Now, in case you want to add in tables, I recommend
you use Power Query to do that because that gives you more options in terms of cleaning and
importing the data. Our next item is called FRED which stands for Federal Reserve Bank of St.
Louis Economic Data. This add-in gives you free access to over 800,000 data series from different
sources, which can majorly reduce the amount of time you spend collecting macroeconomic data. After you install the add-in, you're going to see FRED pop up in the ribbon. There are different options
to choose from. If it's your first time using it, the Quick Start will be the place to go. You
can browse for popular thread data by taking a look at different US data. You have international
data as well as data releases. Let's just go to international data. Let's go to Germany, scroll down,
and bring over the unemployment rate. I get a code inserted here. To get the data, I need to click
on Get Data. And now, everything comes over from this date to this date. You have different data
manipulation options here. To read more about it, go to FRED Info, make sure you also check out About FRED, so that you're sure where you can use this data and what you can't do with the data.
Next one is the Mini Calendar and Date Picker. This makes tasks that require working with dates in
Excel really easy. After you've installed the mini calendar, you can insert it on your sheet by going
to Insert, My Add-ins. You're going to see it here, just double-click and it's going to add the calendar to
your sheet. Now, you can adjust the size here. If you want it smaller, just click on this toggle button
here and it's going to make the calendar smaller. You can browse the calendar by using the arrow
keys. When you want to insert a date, just select it and it's going to insert it in the active cell.
So, let's say I want to add the 12th of January to the cell, I'm just going to click it, it's going to
add it in. If you want to insert the current time, you can select this. If you already have a value
in the cell like I have here, and then I click on a date, it's going to recognize that and ask me if I
want to overwrite the contents. I'm going to click OK and it's going to overwrite it. Now, you also have
some settings options down here. You can change the calendar system. For example, Monday shows up here, or add the week numbers. Now, because you just need a single calendar for that entire sheet, you might
want to keep it somewhere that's always in view. So, let's say, in this case, I need to add dates in
multiple columns, so it helps if I freeze my panes here, and if I freeze, in this case, the first column.
To do that, we just need to go to View, Freeze Panes, Freeze First Column, and now I can navigate to
the side and I always have my calendar in view. If you ever want to remove the calendar from this
sheet, just click on this arrow and select Delete. Next one is the Functions Translator. This is
great if you're working with people who use Excel in different languages. After you've installed
it, you're going to see it on the Home tab all the way to the side here. First thing you need to
do is select your languages. If you click on this gear icon, you can select the From Language and
the To Language. In this case, I have English and German. Then, you can go ahead and either browse
the reference library, or go to the dictionary and type in a specific function name. So, I'm going
to type in OFFSET for English and it's "BEREICH.VERSCHIEBEN" in German, which is a very long name for this function. You can also use the Translator by copying and pasting formulas in there. So, for example here, I'm using
the SMALL function and I'm not sure what the German version of that one is. So, I'm just going
to copy it, go to this box here, paste it in, make sure my delimiters are reflecting the correct one.
So here, my argument separator is a comma, and then I'm going to go ahead and click on this button to
translate the formula from English to German. And notice, my separator changed to a semicolon because that's the default separator for people who use Excel in German. Now, the one thing that seems to
be currently missing are the new functions that got added to Office 365. So, I hope soon they'll
be added to this add-in as well. Next add-in is Symbols and Characters. After you've installed it,
you're going to see it in this Add-ins tab. That's it right here. Click on it, to bring it up under
side pane. Now here, you have different options from emoticons, currency, fractions, circles, and
so on. If you need specific letters from another language, go to languages, select the language.
Let's go with Czech, and we are going to be able to insert these letters. Just keep in mind that
currently Ctrl + Z doesn't work with this add-in, so if you happen to replace something in your cell,
you can't revert that. Now, some cool options from search are, for example, circles, we could add this
one for task that's halfway done. You have many different options here. We could add numbers
and a lot more. This just makes adding symbols and special characters a lot easier to do. Next
up, we have QR4Office. This item enables you to quickly transform your links into QR codes that
you can insert into your sheets. All you need to do is provide the link, I'm just going to paste one
here, and it generates a QR code on the bottom. I can quickly insert it in my file. You have options
for improving the quality. You could go with high quality, you can increase the size, and insert
the version of your choice directly in your file. The next free Excel add-in is an add-in for
draw.io. So, draw.io, which recently got renamed to diagrams.net, is a free web-based application
that allows you to create a variety of diagrams, from flowcharts to software design to networks,
factory, production floor layouts, whatever you need you, will probably find a template for it
here. And even if you don't, you can use these shapes to create whatever you need. Now where does Excel come in? Well, there is a free add-in for this that allows you to easily bring in these diagrams
into your Excel files. Open up the add-in in Excel, I put my draw.io files in my OneDrive, so I'm going
to pick it from the OneDrive folder. Let's go with this one, and we're going to insert it into our
spreadsheet. You can place it wherever you need. Now the great thing is, if I need to make updates
to this, I can just click on Edit, it's going to bring up my diagram inside draw.io, and then
I can go ahead and make changes to this, save it, and then reinsert the diagram from here. Our
next add-in is the Bing Maps. A quick way to visualize your data by location. You're going to
find the Bing Maps right here, under Add-ins. Click on this to insert your map, and then all you
need is your data. You just need to have some locations, so here I have different countries for
the customers, and two different products that is being sold. I want to plot this on the Bing Map. I
just have to highlight the dataset, go over here, and click on this icon, and that's it. Everything is
plotted. I can zoom in, zoom out, click on these to see the exact values, add in more data. Because I'm
working with an official Excel table, everything should be automatic. So, if I add in something
for Austria, I can see it pop up right here. Next one is the Advanced Formula Environment.
So this is great for those that write more complicated Excel functions, and they want a nice,
neat interface of writing these functions. So, most advanced users are familiar with the Name Manager.
So, if you go to Formulas, Name Manager, you can add more complicated formulas to this tiny box
here, but this box is not user-friendly. What is user-friendly is the Advanced Formula Environment. You can bring it up here, you can see the current names that you have in place, you can edit them
in this interface, or you can easily add names directly in here. So, for example, let's say we use
this function a lot in this file, and I want to create an easier function for me to use. I can add
that right here, I'm going to call it the DISCOUNT function. Give it a description if you want, and
define your arguments. So, arguments are basically any sounds that you're referencing are probably
going to end up as arguments. One cell is the price here, so I'll just call this "Product Price,"
and press Enter, and it gets added in here. Now, I can define my function. Basically, it's the same
formula that I wrote, see Product Price pops up here. I want the Product Price multiplied with 1,
minus 10%, so we're just going to add that in. Multiplied with 1, minus 10%. And then,
we're done. We have our new function that we can use, So, DISCOUNT function pops up here, all
I need is the price because everything else is programmed. I press Enter and I get the same result.
Where does this end up? Well, it ends up in our Name Manager but we didn't have to use this tiny box
to write this up. Plus, we never had to mention the LAMBDA function because it wrote us a LAMBDA in
the background. The last item we're going to cover is Excel-to-Word Automation. After you've installed
this add-in, you can see it in the Home tab called Automate Content. Now, there is a lot more to this
add-in than I can cover in this short video, but what's important to know is that, yes, there is a
free version but there is also a paid version of this add-in. To quickly see what it does, you can
follow these instructions. You can insert sample content which is something I've done here. Notice
we have some orange cells here, and these cells can be connected to your Word document. After you've
done that, you can modify the content, and then go ahead and submit the content. And you can open
it up in Word or PowerPoint. Now, I've already done that, so here's how my Word document looks.
Notice the XelPlus here got picked up from this cell. Now the great thing is, I can go ahead
and change this, and then resubmit the content. Go to Word, bring up the add-in, and update the
document. And notice my value changed here as well. Now before we wrap up, let me show you quickly
how you can uninstall an add-in. So, let's say you installed some add-ins that you're not happy
with and you want to get rid of, all you need to do is go back to Insert, Add-ins, go to My Add-ins.
You're going to see your list of add-ins here. If you don't see all of them, click on Refresh,
and they should pop up here. And then, go ahead and uninstall any of the ones you don't need. Just
click on the More Options here, and select Remove, and this is going to remove the add-in. So now, I
uninstalled the FRED Data, and if I close this, my FRED tab on the ribbon is gone. Okay, so that wraps
up our video of my top 10 free Excel add-ins that I think you might find useful. Let me know what
you thought about this list. Is there any add-in you found that you think you can use in your
files? Comment below, let me know. As usual, thank you for being here, thank you for watching, and I'm
going to see you in the next video.
