My Excel add-in, !SEMTools, is popular with many professionals. Accountants, HR, lawyers, marketers, and sales managers all use it. The thing is, even the free version helps you get things done much faster. That’s because some of the tools in add-in work great without having to pay for them. So all you need is just install !SEMTools and start using.
Meanwhile, most of the instruments in add-in still need license for comfortable use. But not those listed on this page.
Here is a list of all the free tools, grouped by what they do.
Sheet Functions
These are formulas you type into cells. The big advantage is they recalculate automatically when your data changes.
Case does not matter when you write these formulas.
Working with Text
Join a range of cells with or without a separator:
=joincells(A1:A15)
=joincells(A1:A15;"|")=wordcount(A1)Compare and find differences in text:
- WORDDIFF: Counts unique word differences between two strings.
- ABSENTWORDS: Shows which words are in one cell but missing in another.
- LEVENSTEIN: Calculates the Levenshtein distance between strings.
=worddiff(A1;B1)
=absentwords(A1;B1)
=levenstein(A1;B1)Regular expressions in formulas:
- REGEXMATCH: Checks if text matches a pattern.
- REGEXEXTRACT: Extracts text using capture groups.
- REGEXREPLACE: Replaces text based on a regex.
=regexextract(A2;"price:\s*(\d+)")Marketing and SEO
STOPWORDS: Returns the list of words that usually don’t bring much sense to the text.
=stopwords()Ribbon Procedures (Buttons)
These are tools you run with a button click. They make changes once, and many put the result on a new sheet to keep your original data safe.
Navigation and Search
- Quickly switch between sheets.
- Create a table of contents with links to all sheets.
- Show an interactive window to filter and go to sheets.
Remove Formulas
- Remove formulas but keep the values. You can do this on a filtered range, a sheet, or the entire workbook.
Delete Rows and Columns
Delete empty ones:
- Delete empty rows.
- Delete empty columns.
Delete all rows based on a condition (checks cells in a selected column):
- Delete row if the cell is empty.
- Delete row if it contains/does not contain Latin letters.
- Delete row if it contains/does not contain numbers.
- Delete row if it contains no letters or numbers.
- Delete row if it contains a specific word.
- Delete row if it contains any word from a list.
Merging and Combinations
- Merge CSV files.
- Merge open workbooks into one.
- Merge sheets into one sheet.
- Merge ranges horizontally and vertically.
- Mass create hyperlinks.
- List all word permutations from a phrase list.
- Combination generator for multiplying lists.
- All combinations of 2 elements from a list.
SEO and PPC Tools
Many of these are unique. Some don’t even have paid alternatives elsewhere.
- Select rows from huge CSV files based on various conditions. Supports tens of millions of rows.
- Parse page titles, H1 tags, and meta descriptions.
- Parse Google search suggestions.
- Parse Yandex search suggestions.
- Cluster keyword lists by markers.
Why This is Helpful
- Functions recalculate automatically.
- Procedures speed up routine work and often place results on a new sheet, keeping your originals safe.
- Many tools are unique and cannot be found elsewhere.
Conclusion
I hope this gives you a reason to try the !SEMTools add-in. I am happy to have any user, whether they use the free tools or decide to get the full version.
This post is also available in RU.