Does Excel have free add-ins that you can easily install and use, which can improve your
reporting, data analysis, and make your life a lot easier? That's what today's video is about. I'm going to cover the top
free Excel add-ins you can use right now to improve your work. (upbeat music) Before we get started, a brief thanks to AlchemyJ
for sponsoring today's video. With AlchemyJ, you can turn
your Excel business model into open API with minimum
programming knowledge. This way, you can
integrate your Excel model into other applications. Now I'm going to chat more
about them towards the end, so stay tuned for that. Now let's start with a
list of Excel add-ins. I'm just going to quickly show
you how you can install them and run them first. Just go to the insert tab, click on get add-ins right here. When you do, it's going to bring up the Microsoft Store where you can search and install
any add-ins that you need. You can also take a look
at the add-ins available by the different categories. Once you add an add-in, it's going to show up under my add-ins. Then you can also come
to this view right here by clicking on my add-ins directly. Or if you click under dropdown right here, you get to see your recently used add-ins. When you go to see all, it's
going to take you back here. So in case you ever want
to remove an add-in, all you have to do is click on the options and decide here and select remove. Now let's install my
first recommended add-in, which is the QR code generator for Office. That's the add-in I want, click on add. Make sure you take a
look at the license terms and privacy policy. And after you do, click on continue. This is going to install
the add-in for you. And the best part about this add-in is that it's super easy to use. All you have to do is type in your URL. You can select between HTTP,
HTTPS, email, telephone, SMS, geo, and custom. In this case, I'll just go with HTTPS. I'm going to type in a
website and that's it. I get the QR code generated right here. I can decide on the size. Click on insert, and it's going to insert it right here. Then you can copy and paste this in any Office document that you need. Now, all anyone has to do is bring out their phones and scan this, and they're going to get
directed to the website. Next up is the Web Video Player. This add-in allows you
to embed YouTube videos directly to your Excel spreadsheets or your PowerPoint presentations. Once you add it, you just need to paste
the URL of the video that you have on YouTube
or Vimeo right here. So I'm just going to paste mine in and then select set video. This is going to bring
up the video directly into your spreadsheet and you can place it where you like. So this is an alternative to
adding a link in your file. This is going to make it more likely that people are going to check
out the link and play the video. So for example, if you're
creating an instruction sheet and you want to let people know how to use a specific formula, you can already embed that video in there. Next in line is the Microsoft Visio
Data Visualizer for Excel. You can create Visio type of charts from the comfort of your spreadsheet. I've already added it to my add-ins. So all I have to do is
click on the dropdown here and select it from this list. I get the data visualizer
dialog box pop up here, where I can select
between a basic flowchart, a cross-functional flowchart, or an organizational chart. They've already done a separate
video on the org chart. I'm going to add the link to
the description of this video. For this example, let's go and take a look at the horizontal basic flowchart. Select the one that I like. And what it does is it
creates a sample diagram for me together with sample dataset. Now the reason it does
this is so that I can see in which format it needs the data to be able to create this graphic. This way, when I come to
adjust it for my own datasets, I know in what format I
need my own data to be so I can copy and paste it in the table and just refresh this diagram. Then you can, of course,
also manually adjust this to what you need. Just to show you a quick example, let's go and update the
existing sample flowchart that we got. This flowchart is about
creating a course module. If the module passes review, it's going to go to publish
course and then the process ends. If it doesn't, we need
to address feedback, then publish course and
then the process ends. Now let's say I'm fine
with this process flow, except I need to add a step in
between publishing the course and ending the process. And that step is to
contact the department head and inform them. I need to give this
process step a unique ID, then what's the next step? Well, it should be in between these. So the next step is the end
process, which has this code. So let's copy and paste that here. I can then select a shape type. I have a choice between
all these different shapes and I just wanted to be in the same shape as publishing the
course, which is process. Now, there is one thing I need to change because currently publish
course goes directly to end. Instead of it going to end, I
need it to go to my new step. So once I've updated this, all I need to do is click on refresh and I get my process added here. Now, I can also save this as an image by clicking on the arrow here
and saving it as an image, or I can open this in the
web and save it as PDF. So the moment I click on open in the web, it's going to create a Visio file for me. When I open it, I come to the webpage
and on the side here, I can download this as PDF or I can directly print it if I choose to. Recently, there were
improvements to this add-in. You can read more about it in the Tech Community, Microsoft Blog. The changes are listed here. They have, for example, added new templates in Excel
with links to them right here. You also have the add-in
available in 26 languages and you have single sign-on. You can now easily create
flowcharts and org charts without using shapes or smart art. Next up, People Graph. This is automatically
available under add-ins. Now in case you don't see it, you can add it by going to get add-ins. The moment I click on it,
we can see what it does. It creates an infographic, in this case, a people
chart based on data. Now this is just a sample graph just to show me what it can do. But of course I want it
to point to my own data. The way to do that is just
click inside the graph to activate these icons right here. I click on the first one
where I can select my data. This is my sample data. I'm just going to select
that and click on create. You can update the header
by going back to data and adjusting the header right here. Now here I have a tip for you. In case you want this to be dynamic, so the moment you end up adding
more information to this, that your chart updates, what you can do is turn your dataset into an official Excel table. Just press Ctrl+T, my data has headers, and now I can go ahead and
add some more data to this and I get it inside my
chart automatically. Now, another thing you can do is to update the theme of this. You have the choice of updating
type, theme, and shape. Under theme, I can choose
a dark theme like these, or go with a lighter version like here. I can also adjust the shape. So it doesn't necessarily
have to be a person. It can be money. It can be a watch. It can be a dress or a laptop. You have the ability to
choose between these shapes. Now, what you can also do
is to save this as an image. That's how easy it is
to create an infographic out of your dataset. Next up is Mini Calendar and Date Picker. Once you install it, you can select it by going to my add-ins, and it's going to insert a mini
calendar on your spreadsheet. The advantage of having this on your sheet is that you can click
on any of these dates and it's going to insert
it in your sheets. It saves you the trouble
of typing in the dates and maybe typing in the dates wrong. So this is great for cases like this. If you're creating tasks and you want to come up with deadlines, you can take a look at the calendar, click on a date, and it's going
to insert it on your sheet. Now, you have the ability
to make some adjustments to the look of this so you can toggle calendar size. You can also change the calendar theme. You have the ability to
change the calendar systems instead of Sunday being first here, you could have Monday, for example, first. You can also show week numbers, but keep in mind that these are based on the U.S. week numbers. You can show and hide settings by clicking on the gear icon right here. So once you've added your dates, you can, of course, have the flexibility of moving this where you want. If you don't need it, you just have to press
delete and you get rid of it. Now you also have the ability to add the current time as well, just click on it and it's going
to insert it in your cell. So as you can see, I'm filming this quite late at night. With Bing Maps, you can
easily plot locations and visualize your data. So the moment you click on it, it's going to insert a sample
map on your Excel sheet. You get to insert sample data if you want to see how it works, or in this case, we want
to insert my own data, which I have right here. So I'm just going to X this out and instead highlight my data set. And to plot it on the Bing Map, I'm going to click on show locations. This is going to figure out my countries, and it's going to plot my
values as circles right here. So the moment I hover over
one, or I click on one, I get to see the actual
sales value for that country. You have the ability to zoom in. You can move around and
zoom out as you like. In addition to this, you
have some more options. So you can update the map
type to be a birds eye instead of a road. You can also update your
data points to be pie charts instead of circles. But to get this activated, you need more than one categories. In this case, I just have sales, but let's say I have
sales for two products. So this is actually product
A and I have product B. Let's just add some
random numbers to these that are between 100 and 300 and Ctrl+Enter. Now, another tip for you is to update this into an official Excel table so that the moment you add more regions or more countries to this is automatically going
to show up in your chart. So let's go ahead and do that. Press Ctrl+T, go with okay. Now let's plot this, so it brings my products
being there as well. So I just click on this and
I get a circle in a circle and I see the legend down here. So let me just make this a bit smaller so you can see the legend as well. Now let's change this into a pie chart. So click on the gear icon, and
now I can select pie chart. And I also have the ability to update the color of
product A and product B. So that's the list of my top free Excel recommended add-ins. Many thanks to AlchemyJ
for partnering with us in today's video and
supporting my channel. If you have Excel models
that you want to integrate into your applications, you need an API, which is short for application
programming interface. An API allows the Excel model to interact and communicate with
another piece of software. Usually, creating an API requires
extensive coding knowhow. Not so with AlchemyJ, you
can turn your Excel model into APIs in four easy steps. Step one is to create your Excel model. In step two, you define the
functions your API provides, the parameters they have, and the access control they need. In step three, by simply
clicking a button, AlchemyJ will analyze your spreadsheet and then generate the Java
REST or JavaScript API that implements the
business logic contained in the Excel spreadsheet. And step four is to start using the API or integrating it into your applications. It can be a REST web
service or a Java package. With AlchemyJ, you also get a testing tool that allows the users to
define one or multiple sets of test data and run them before and after the API has been compiled. AlchemyJ also automatically generates an open API specification based on the model defined in Excel. This allows you to
describe your entire API and generate the specification
with a single click. In short, AlchemyJ can significantly
shorten the time needed to create, implement, test,
and document an interface. In addition to this, AlchemyJ offers
multi-developer collaboration to maximize efficiency for
creating complex API models. AlchemyJ offers a free
test version as well. To find out more, check out the link in the description of this video. That's it for today. If you have a favorite Excel add-in that you're currently using, let me know in the comments below. I hope you enjoyed this video. Don't forget to give it a
thumbs up before you leave. And if you like what
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when I release new content. Thank you for watching. And I'm going to see
you in the next video. (upbeat music)
