I was working on a demo file about Excel’s new Data Types but I found an incredible set of templates created by Elisabetta Caldesi!

Data Type Templates

Template link (Microsoft Tech Community).

Full List of Elisabetta’s Templates:

• Favorite movie list
• Periodic table
• Planets & Comets
• Stars & Constellations
• U.S. college decision helper
• Relocation helper
• Baby name tracker
• Nutrition tracker
• Recipe analyzer
• Fitness tracker
• Investment tracker

I reviewed and recommend ‘Planets and Comets’ and ‘Favorite Movie List’.

Why Am I Impressed?

I’m critical of poorly designed spreadsheets but these are great. Why?

• design: effortlessly explore/navigate the content. Smart use of font size, instructions, space.
• functionality: slicer displays smaller amounts of info (easier to read). Images added via a simple formula =IFERROR(F7.image, “No image”). Dynamic arrays reduce amount of required formulas.
• discovery: learn tons of facts about planets. Use movie template to start endless conversations.

Seen below is sheet ‘Solar system by the numbers’ from Planets & Comets.

This kind of functionality was pure fantasy when I started working with Excel 20 years ago.

Sample Formula

Caldesi used various Dynamic Arrays in the templates including this one:

=TRANSPOSE(INDEX(SORTBY(tblMovies[#Data],tblMovies[My Rating ★],-1,tblMovies[Title],1),SEQUENCE(10),1))

Tips & Info

• remember to correctly spell a movie title
• clarify when there’s a duplicate name
• not all movies are recognized. Empty description fields could create errors in sheet Dashboard
• i have a SurfacePro (small screen) so I modified row/column height in a few places
• these DataTypes may not be allowed on your work computer and may not work on all Excel versions. I have Microsoft 365 office insider edition

My Movie List

I played around with the template and added a few movies to get started. I also added a Watch List.

Movie Stuff

I’m frequently guessing an actor’s age or saying “he/she was in that other movie!”.

Last night we were re-watching GroundHog Day. I had never noticed that Michael Shannon was in the movie! Also in the movie was Brian Doyle-Murray (Bill Murray’s brother!). Another brother, not in the movie, is Joel Murray (MadMen).

A month ago I noticed that comedian Ron James had a minor line in Strange Brew. I recommend Strange Brew only if you are in a goofy mood.

About Me

My name is Kevin Lehrbass. I’ve been a Data Analyst for 20 years now.

I struggled to think of an interesting blog post to start the year until I stumbled across these cool templates. Elisabetta did a great job designing these templates. I wonder what else she’ll create?!