Every now and then you come across something that Excel doesn’t have a function for which requires you to get fancy and figure out some tricky way to get the job done. While coding up a solution in ...

Q. I usually like Excel PivotTables, but because they don’t allow me to do certain things, such as delete cells or insert new columns or rows, I’m wondering if there is a reasonable alternative? A.

Microsoft Excel has been the premier spreadsheet software for decades, since outdoing the once venerable Lotus 1-2-3, the first killer app for PCs in the 1980s. And Excel's dominance has yet to be ...