Simple Excel Tips
Excel is one of the top most important tools mainly for many businesses. Its powerful options and capabilities allow it to be used for a number of problems and solutions. They include calculations, data converter, business data collection, and tracking, decision support tool, and even a simple spreadsheet. Knowing some Excel tips will allow you to use Excel in a more effective way.
When you are working something on Excel, you don’t tend to waste time. Because you will be getting most out of it. You may even want to improve your experience with Excel.
Here are 9 simple Excel tips to boost your productivity.
1. Navigation:
Working around with the spreadsheet will slowly speed up your experience with Excel. It will even fasten your workload. If you are aware of some shortcuts to work with the Spreadsheet, then you can increase your working speed on Excel even more.
Here are a few quick and easy shortcuts that will help you navigate around the Spreadsheet with ease.
- Ctrl + End button: Skip to the end of the document
- Ctrl + Home button: Skip to the start of the document
- Ctrl + right arrow: Skip to the end of the line
- Ctrl + left arrow: Skip to the start of the line
2. Quick Sum Alt and +:
“=SUM” is the most important and common mathematical function used in Excel to add a selection of cells. There is an option to speed up your add function called Quick sum. Just you have to highlight the cell where you want the result to appear and press “Alt and +”. This will automatically highlight your intended cell. If it doesn’t, click and select the cells you want to add.
3. Freeze panes:
Sometimes, we need to lock some cells to the top or side of the spreadsheet. It is as easy as pressing a single button to lock headers or a row/column of cells. You can even lock the header or row/column with a bit of some explanatory text at the top of your sheet. This will make it easy for you to read the sheet and looks good while sharing it with another person.
4. Conditional formatting:
This is an option that saves you a lot of time in case of presentation of the excel sheet. The conditional formatting makes the excel sheet understandable at a glance. This also easily and quickly makes your excel sheet look better and interpretable. The conditional formatting that consists of color scales that is capable of highlighting higher and lower numbers quickly.
5. Change the number of default sheets:
If you are used to using multiple sheets in excel, then the standard 3 might not suit if you are constantly adding more for every sheet you make. If you want excel to open 4 or 12 sheets automatically, there is an option to set a default in excel.
To obtain this, go to File > Options > General and change the number of sheets you want to open while creating a new workbook.
6. Change the sheet name:
There is no necessity that you should maintain the sheet names as Sheet 1, Sheet 2, Sheet 3. You can change the sheet names according to the content in the excel sheet. You can even change the color. To rename the sheet, you can either right-click on the particular sheet at the bottom and click on Rename or double click on the sheet at the bottom. To change the tab color, right-click on the sheet at the bottom and select Tab color.
7. Make use of format painter:
Format painter plays an important role in Excel. It makes your spreadsheet look so consistent. This can be used by selecting the cells, press the format painter button, and drag around your desired cells.
8. Change the Enter button move direction:
By default, when the Enter button is pressed in Excel, the cell selection will move down. Sometimes, you may require to moving the cell selection to right or left or up. And it is easy to change the Enter button move direction. Select Options > Advanced, then select the direction of the move when you press the Enter button.
9. Use the F Functions:
We use the function keys for different shortcuts. And here are the uses of the function keys in the Excel sheet.
F1 – Opens Excel Help
F2 – Moves the insertion point to the end of the contents of the active cell
F3 – Displays the Paste Name dialog box.
F4 – Repeats the last action
F5 – Displays the Go To dialog box
F6 – Moves to the next pane in a worksheet that has been split
F7 – Displays the spelling dialog box
F8 – Turns on/off extend mode
F9 – Calculates the workbook
F10 – shows key tips, for navigating without a mouse
F11 – Creates a chart sheet of a selected range
F12 – Brings up Save As dialog box.
These are some simple Excel tips that help you use Excel in a more effective way and boosts your productivity.
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