2018 September 24 Archive - EXEIdeas

Microsoft Excel is the premier spreadsheet application. Powerful and diverse, there are few actions it can’t do. Yet it’s one of the most complex, and there are few experts who’ve mastered all its’ intricate operations. These tips gathered from The Excel Experts will save you time and effort on Excel.Autofill:This is the most basic, but most overlooked of operations. Typing a repetitive sequence, like a series of dates (1/1, 1/2) into each cell can take up hours of your valuable time.Instead, fill the first few cells in the sequence, then move the cursor to the bottom right corner of the last cell. Hold the cursor over it until it becomes a plus (+) sign. Then click, and drag that to fill as many cells as you need. The sequence will be completed in seconds.Save Custom Carts:Using Excel, you can customize charts to suite your needs. But what if you need to re-create that graph in the future? Say, if you’ve got to file the same report every month. You can save your custom charts as templates.Once your custom chart is perfect, right click it. Select ‘save as template’. You’ll save a new file in the templates folder, with a .CRTX extension. When you need to file next month’s evaluation, select the data you want, go to the insert tab, then go to all charts and find your custom chart type.Conceal Your Data:Say you’re making a lengthy spreadsheet for a lab report and you need a piece of data, but it’s inconveniently placed? Excel lets you hide it!Highlight the cells, then right click and choose Format Cells. In the numbers tab, go to category and choose ‘custom’. Type three semicolons (;;;) into the field, then press Okay. Now the data is hidden, but can still be used in formulas.Whilst this simple tip will help you, there’s a lot more you can do with your data, consider Excel data services from the experts to make Excel work for you.Organize With Pivot Tables:Pivot tables are a quality of life function that’s unfortunately overlooked. They summarize your entire collection of data based on your reference points. Say you’ve charted the sales of every employee by week, and want to only see one employee’s sales on a specific week.To make a pivot table, first, make sure all columns are named correctly. Then go to the insert tab in the toolbar and select ‘pivot table’. Even better, go to ‘recommended pivot tables’ and see if excel can find the right one for you.About the Author:This is a guest post by Kumarpal Shah, an entrepreneur and blogger at InsideTechno.Find Me On Facebook | Twitter