Excel Data Cleansing Straight to the Point

Description

This Straight to the Point guide provides an introduction to data cleansing, which also goes by names such as data munging and data wrangling. Whatever the name, it basically means doing what needs to be done to make data useful and trustworthy. Data cleansing can include the following tasks:Deleting unnecessary headersDeleting summary rowsFilling in gapsFlattening a reportMerging and appending data from multiple sourcesPulling data from source X to complete data in source YSplitting names from addressesIdentifying and deleting duplicate recordsConverting units of measurement in multiple sources About the Author Acknowledgments INTRODUCTION A Data Cleansing Example Data Cleansing as a Skill The Straight to the Point Ethos CORRECTING NAMES: PROPER CASE COMPARING LISTS: WHAT’S OVER HERE THAT’S NOT OVER THERE? Invitations and Responses (Match It All Up!) Determining What’s over There That’s Not over Here A Word About Strategy PEELING, PARSING, AND SEGMENTING Extracting the First Name (Using Flash Fill) Splitting by a Single Delimiter: Separating the City from the Name Splitting into Rows: Getting Those People Out of There! IDENTIFYING DUPLICATE RECORDS: FUZZY MATCHING Excel’s Duplicate Remover: The Hazard! Reality, Context, and Strategy: Flagging Records for Review Instead of Clearing Duplicates MERGING AND APPENDING MULTIPLE WORKBOOKS FROM USELESS TO USEFUL: FLATTENING A REPORT Let’s Flatten Some Stuff! FINAL THOUGHTS Index