Basic Excel – Top Tips & Tricks

Inserting todays date

CTRL plus ;

Custom date format

• Click on your date field

• Click in number tab to bring up format cells dialog box

• Click on Custom and enter mmmm yyyy and you will have a custom date

Autofill Techniques• Select a field with a date in it• Hover over bottom right of cell where black square is• Then hold left mouse click and drag in any direction you

wish to view the date.• You will see that excel automatically populates the next

dates and autofills the next date. Same goes for numbers 1,2 then excel will put in 3,4,5 etc…

• You can also hold right click and drag and select the FILL TYPE and use custom series for more advanced features

Quick sums

• Select your table and leave blank spaces in rows or column you need sums

• Click Autosum and done!• Now hold 2 x cells which need the word total using CTRL

button, so select cells and type total and press CTRL plus enter

• Then click press ENTER ensuring you hold CTRL and the word total will appear in both fields

Creating a quick chart

• Select your table• Then press F11• You can now manipulate your

chart however you want

Quick duplicate of a sheet• Hold CTRL and hold Left mouse

click and drag Right• Next rename your sheets e.g.

2012 and 2013

Edit multiple sheet simultaneously

• Hold CTRL and click both 2012 and 2013 tabs• Then on current sheet edit cell style e.g. change

colour• Next click onto off the sheet tabs – click chart and

back onto any of sheets• You will see that it has updated the same cells at the

same time

View spreadsheet side by side• In VIEW click new window once in your spreadsheet• You will see at bottom you have 1:1 and 1:2 version

of the same spreadsheet• Next click arrange all and arrange however you like.

Here I will use vertical.• You can now compare 2012 and 2013 data of the

same spreadsheet easily.

Hyperlinks• Enter text required before clicking on link• Click on insert notebook tab and click hyperlink• Click place in this document (on left)• Choose sheet you wish to link to• You can also select here if you wish to link to a certain

cell within the sheet you have selected• Link becomes blue once successful

Making a table• Using table will allow you to update charts easier• Highlight your text table and F11 (without table)• Highlight your text table and click insert notebook tab and

click table and click ok• Now highlight your table and F11• Updating your data and chart is now automatic. Go back to

the table and select the last cell and press TAB on keyboard• This will show a new blank space to enter data• Enter data and flick back to the chart and done you have an

updated chart automatically

Filtering using table

• Once in table you will get filter buttons in white (see above).• Next click one of these to filter in this case Travel method and choose (tick)

Plane only.• You will see when you click OK it will sort the table by Plane.

Conditional Formatting• Select the field you wish to apply conditional formatting too• Under styles under home section click the conditional formatting tab and select

new rule• Now select the option you require• In this demo we are using the format only cells that contain • Where it says between change to equal to and in blank box to the right enter

your number e.g. 1• So if a value is 1 you want a colour to appear e.g. red – to do this click on format

and choose colour and click OK• Now repeat this for more numbers and you will see that it will show different

colours depending on the number• You can also apply the same format to other cells using the format paints brush• You can also try using ranges (between instead of equal to) especially for targets

etc…

Find and Select• CTRL + F• Then enter the word you want to find• You can also find and replace text within excel• You can also ask it to find a word and highlight

it in a colour

Data Validation• Enter the text how many bars per day do you eat• In settings go to the allow drop down list and select whole

number• Now enter a minimum and maximum number you wish to

restrict users to e.g. 0 and 10• Now along the menu click Error Alert• Now make sure stop is selected and enter title error and

message: Enter between 0 and 10 please.

Security• Click the FILE tab• Click SAVE AS• Click Tools (bottom of save as box)• Click on General Options• Enter a password twice and click ok.• You can also give people read only access if you wish

(see tick option)

Shortcut keys• ALT and TAB to change windows• ALT and F4 to close a window• CTRL and SHIFT and spacebar once to select all data in first table in the

spreadsheet• ALT and = does auto sum of values above• CTRL and HOME takes you back to first cell• CTRL and END takes you to the end• CTRL and 0 to hide a column quickly• CTRL and ¬ will show you all formula's