Skip to main content

Improve your Excel Productivity with these Shortcuts and formulas

I have given below 45 tips and tricks to improve your productivity while working in Excel.

Useful Keyboard Shortcuts

1. To format any selected object, press ctrl+1
2. To insert current date, press ctrl+;
3. To insert current time, press ctrl+shift+;
4. To repeat last action, press F4
5. To edit a cell comment, press shift + F2
6. To autosum selected cells, press alt + =
7. To see the suggest drop-down in a cell, press alt + down arrow
8. To enter multiple lines in a cell, press alt+enter
9. To insert a new sheet, press shift + F11
10. To edit active cell, press F2 (places cursor in the end)
11. To hide current row, press ctrl+9
12. To hide current column, press ctrl+0
13. To unhide rows in selected range, press ctrl+shift+9
14. To unhide columns in selected range, press ctrl+shift+0
15. To recalculate formulas, press F9
16. To select data in current region, press ctrl+shift+8
17. To see formulas in the worksheet, press ctrl+`
18. While editing formulas to change the reference type from absolute to relative vice versa, press F4
19. To format a number as currency, press ctrl+shift+4 (ctrl+$)
20. To apply outline border around selected cells, press ctrl+shift+7
21. To open the macros dialog box, press alt+F8
22. To copy value from above cell, press ctrl+’
23. To format current cell with comma formats, press ctrl+shift+1
24. To go to the next worksheet, press ctrl+shift+pg down
25. To go to the previous worksheet, press ctrl+shift+pg up

Situations and How to Solve them using Excel Formulas

26. To get the first name of a person, use =left(name,find(” “,name)-1)
27. To calculate mortgage payments, use =PMT(interest-rate,number-of-payments,how-much-loan)
28. To get nth largest number in a range, use =large(range,n)…
29. To get nth smallest number in a range, use = small(range,n)… 
30. To generate a random phone number, use =randbetween(1000000000,9999999999), needs analysis toolpak if you are using excel 2003 or earlier… 
31. To count number of words in a cell, use =len(trim(text))-len(SUBSTITUTE(trim(text),” “,””))… 
32. To count positive values in a range, use =countif(range,”>0″)… 
33. To calculate weighted average, use SUMPRODUCT() function
34. To remove unnecessary spaces, use =trim(text)
35. To format a number as SSN using formulas, use =text(ssn-text,”000-00-0000″)… 
36. To find age of a person based on DOB, use =TEXT((NOW()-birth_date)&””,”yy “”years”” m “”months”” dd “”days”””), output will be like 27 years 7 months 29 days
37. To get name from initials from a name, use IF(), FIND(), LEN() and SUBSTITUTE() formulas… 
38. To get proper fraction from a number (for eg 1/3 from 6/18), use =text(fraction, “?/?”)
39. To get partial matches in vlookup, use * operator like this: =vlookup(“abc*”,lookup_range,return_column)
40. To simulate averageif() in earlier versions of excel, use =sumif(range, criteria)/countif(range, criteria)
41. To debug your formulas, select the portions of formula and press F9 to see the result of that portion… 
42. To get the file extension from a file name, use =right(filename,3) (doesn’t work for files that have weird extensions like .docx, .htaccess etc.)
43. To quickly insert an in cell micro-chart, use REPT() function… 
44. COUNT() only counts number of cells with numbers in them, if you want to count number of cells with anything in them, use COUNTA()
45. Using named ranges in formulas saves you a lot of time. To define one, just select some cells, and go to menu > insert > named ranges > define

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Formatting Tips

1. Use tables to format data quickly Excel Tables  are an incredibly powerful way to handle a bunch of related data. Just select any cell with in the data and press CTRL+T and then Enter. And bingo, your data looks slick in no time. This has to be the best and easiest formatting tip. 2. Change colors in a snap So you have made a spreadsheet model or dashboard. And you want to change colors to something fresh. Just go to Page Layout ribbon and choose a color scheme from Colors box on top left. Microsoft has defined some great color schemes. These are well contrasted and look great on your screen. You can also define your own color schemes (to match corporate style). What more, you can even define schemes for fonts or combine both and create a new theme. 3. Use cell styles Consistency is an important aspect of formatting. By using cell styles, you can ensure that all similar information in your workbook is formatted in the same way. For example, you can color all input cells in orang...
Post a Comment
Read more

3D Map in Excel

3D Maps ( Power Map) is available in the Office 365 versions of Excel 2013 and all versions of Excel 2016. Using 3D Maps, you can build a pivot table on a map. You can fly through your data and animate the data over time. 3D Maps lets you see five dimensions: latitude, longitude, color, height, and time. Using it is a fascinating way to visualize large data sets. 3D Maps can work with simple one-sheet data sets or with multiple tables added to the Data Model. Select the data. On the Insert tab, choose 3D Map. (The icon is located to the right of the Charts group.) If you have Excel 2013 you might have to download Power Map Preview from Microsoft to use the feature. Next, you need to choose which fields are your geography fields. This could be Country, State, County, Zip Code, or even individual street addresses. You are given a list of the fields in your data set and drop zones named Height, Category, and Time. Hover over any point on the map to get details such as last sale date and a...
Post a Comment
Read more