Last week, we had a lovely poll on what are your favorite features of Excel? More than 120 people responded to it with various answers. So I did what any data analyst worth his salt would do,
- I downloaded all the 120+ comments data
- I home brewed a large cup of coffee and started gulping it.
- I started analyzing the comments
So here are the top 10 features in Excel according to you.
1. Excel Formulas
63 people (50%) said Formulas are their favorite feature in Excel. Of course, you can say, Formulas & Functions are Excel!!! . They are what Excel is made of. But then again, a surprising fact is very few people actually know how to use formulas. Most people would Excel as a glorified notepad or ledger – just to type data. Once you understand the power of formulas, then you can be an irresistible analyst. Your boss & colleagues will be all over you for insights & information, much like the girls in Axe commercials.
Resources to learn Excel formulas:
- Introduction to Excel formulas – video
- Top 10 formulas for aspiring analysts
- 51 everyday Excel formulas – explained
2. VBA, Macros & automation
55 people said VBA is what makes them use Excel. VBA stands for Visual Basic for Applications, is a special language that Excel speaks. If you learn this language, you can make Excel do crazy things for you, like generate and email monthly reports automatically while you are busy reading this article.
Macros, little VBA programs are what you write to achieve this. Learning VBA can be quite fun, challenging & extremely rewarding experience. Once you learn VBA, suddenly your company will find you invaluable, thanks to all the time & effort you will be saving due to automation.
Resources to learn VBA:
3. Pivot Tables
53 people said they love Pivot tables. They save you a ton of time, let you create complex reports, charts & calculations all with few clicks. No wonder so many people love them.
Pivot tables are ideal tools for managers & analysts who always have to answer questions like,
- What is the trend of sales in last 6 months?
- Who are our top 10 customers?
- Which button do I press for strong latte?
May be not the last one, but Pivot tables can answer almost any business question if you throw right data at them.
Resources to learn Pivot tables:
- Introduction to Pivot tables
- Top 5 Pivot table tricks & tips
- Pivot tables – detailed information, examples & tutorials
4. Lookup Formulas
25 people said lookup formulas (VLOOKUP, HLOOKUP, INDEX, MATCH etc.) are their favorite feature of Excel. Lookup formulas help you locate any information in your workbooks based on input criteria. By knowing how to write lookup formulas, you can build dashboards, make interactive charts, create effective models & feel pretty darn awesome.
Resources to learn lookup formulas:
- What is VLOOKUP formula, how to use it?
- Comprehensive guide to Excel lookup formulas
- VLOOKUP quiz – how well do you know it?
5. Excel Charts
Excel charts help you communicate insights & information with ease. By choosing your charts wisely and formatting them cleanly, you can convey a lot. I guess, most people hate Excel charts (hence it is at 5th position), because they are hard to work with. You can loose a whole afternoon formatting the wedges of a pie chart. But thanks to resources like Chandoo.org, you know better to make a column / bar chart and be done in 5 minutes.
Resources to learn Excel charts:
- How to select right type of charts for your data
- Creating combination charts
- More charting principles & charting tutorials
6. Sorting & Filtering data
If Microsoft ever needs few extra billions of cash, they just have to turn sorting & filtering features in Excel to pay-per-use. These ad-hoc analysis features are so powerful & simple that any aspiring analyst must be fully aware of them.
Resources to learn sorting & filtering features:
- Filter by selected cell’s value & other cool tips
- Sorting pivot tables in anyway you want
- SUBTOTAL formula and using it with filters
- Introduction to Advanced filters
- More sorting tips | filtering tips
7. Conditional formatting
Conditional formatting is a hidden feature in Excel that can make your workbooks sexy. Just add some CF to highlight your data and you will turn boring into interesting. With new features like data bars, color scales & icon sets, conditional formatting is even more powerful.
Resources to learn conditional formatting:
- Introduction to conditional formatting
- Conditional formatting basics – Video
- Conditional formatting – top 5 tips
- More tips & tutorials on conditional formatting
8. Drop down validation & form controls
Right from my 3.5 years old daughter to CEO of a company, Everyone loves to be in control. So how can you make your workbooks interactive, so that end users can control the inputs ?
By using form controls & drop down lists of course.
Resources to learn dropdown lists, form controls:
- How to create an in-cell drop-down box for entering values?
- Introduction to Excel form controls
- Making your charts, workbooks & dashboards interactive – detailed guide
9. Excel Tables & Structural References
Excel tables, a new feature added in Excel 2007 is a very powerful way to structure, maintain & use tabular data – the bread and butter of any data analysis situation. With tables, you can add or remove data, set up structural references, connect them to external sources (SQL server, ODBC etc.), add them to data models (Excel 2013 onwards), link them to PowerPivot (Excel 2010 onwards), format automatically, filter & sort with ease and still be out of office before lunch break. It is a pity Microsoft did not call them pixie dust or magic mix.
Resources to learn Excel tables:
- Introduction to Excel tables
- Using Excel tables – Introduction video
- Using structural references – video
- More tips & tutorials on Excel tables
10. PowerPivot, Data Explorer & Data Analysis features
Although Excel in itself is quite powerful, it struggles to analyze certain types of data,
- Combining multiple tables and creating reports from them
- Processing data from difference sources and getting output to Excel
- What if analysis, scenarios & optimization
This is where add-ins like PowerPivot, Data Explorer and Analysis toolpak come in to picture. They let Excel do more, just like bat-mobile lets batman kick more ass.
Resources to learn more:
- Introduction to PowerPivot
- Introduction to DAX & PowerPivot measures
- Using Solver in Excel
- More on PowerPivot | data explorer
Learn all these features & more in one place
If you are looking to master all these top 10 features (and more) in one place, I highly recommend enrolling in my online classes. These training programs offer a step-by-step, in-depth, practical instruction on all areas of Excel, VBA, Dashboards & PowerPivot so that you can be awesome at your work. Click on below links to learn more.
- Excel, VBA & Dashboard training programs
- Excel & Dashboard training programs
- PowerPivot training program (next batch in July, 2013)
Or if you prefer face-to-face training & live in USA, you are in awesome luck. I am visiting USA this summer to conduct advanced excel & dashboards masterclasses in Chicago, New York, Washington DC & Columbus OH.
Click here for details & to book your spot.
8 Responses to “Top 5 keyboard shortcuts for Excel Charts”
As far as I remember (checked, again, 2 minutes ago) in my "Excel 2013" in order to select various chart elements I need to use the Arrow keys and not the TAB key.
Practically, the TAB key does nothing (within a Chart).
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Michael (Micky) Avidan
Thanks for pointing this out. This is how I remember it too, but when I was recording the video yesterday, only TAB key worked. MS must have changed the keys in Excel 2016. I have edited the post to include both keys.
The key navigation on charts is different in 2016.
TAB cycles through a layer of objects (SHIFT+TAB cycles backwards)
ENTER move down a layer
ESC moves up a layer
So on a column chart with title/legend/data labels if you select the plotarea the TAB will go through Title > Legend > Plotarea.
ENTER at plotarea will then select Vertical axis. Tab will take you through
Horizontal axis > gridlines > Series > Horizontal Axis.
ENTER with series selected will then allow you to TAB through individual data points and data labels.
If you ENTER on datalabels you can TAB through each data label.
ALT + F1 : to create default chart
ALT+E S T = CTRL + ALT + V, T : I find that easier to remember
I second what Michael already said about TAB and arrow keys. I can't help but think if this is related to the "," or ";" as separator. I prefer to use the chart tools - layout- drop down box, anyway.
Got to be F11 for instant charting. Highlight your data , hit F11 and voila! ?
Ctrl+1 is the most important chart shortcut. In fact, it works for any Excel object: whatever is selected, Ctrl+1 opens the task pane or dialog to format that object.
Somewhere along the line, maybe when Excel 2016 came out, the arrow keys stopped working to cycle through the elements of a chart. But what works is holding Ctrl while clicking the arrow keys. I haven't gotten used to the Tab and other keys, but as long as Ctrl+Arrow works, I'm good.
And F4 used to be so helpful when formatting a lot of charts. But since Excel 2007 came out, it has been mostly useless. It used to remember a whole set of changes at once, so I get that the newer modeless dialogs make that impractical. But now it only seems to work with formatting of lines and borders, and maybe fills. I find myself writing a lot of VBA one-liners in the Immediate Window to handle these tedious formatting tasks.
after clicking on a chart, is there a shortcut key to copy it?
Thank you for the Alt E S T - tip. This is more than a time saver. Because of dynamic charts or de-activated external references to data when you make the charts, you often have empty charts that are otherwise impossible to format. So this shortcut helps adressing that. I will work with it more and see if there remain some obstacles.