As an analyst (or manager), I bet a good portion of your Excel time is spent writing formulas and getting the results.
So today, let us learn 5 important keyboard shortcuts that will save you a lot of time and help you write better formulas.
- F2: Edit a formula cell. When you select a cell and press F2, Excel places cursor at the end and lets you edit the cell value / formula.
- F3: Paste names in to formula. When you have a lot of names, often remembering them can be tricky. Whenever you want to type a name, press F3 instead. Excel will show a list of all names and pick what you want.
- Tab: Auto-complete functions, names, structural references. As you start typing a formula, Excel shows auto-complete suggestions. Use arrow keys to select the function, name or structural reference you want, Press Tab key to let Excel type it for you. You can save a ton of time by just arrow key + tabbing.
- F4: Switch reference styles – Absolute > Mixed > Relative > Absolute. When typing formulas, often you may want to change a certain cell reference to Absolute or Mixed or Relative. You can use F4 key to do the switching. Just place cursor inside the range / cell address and press F4 to cycle thru all available reference styles. (more: Guide to Excel cell references and when to use what?)
- ALT + ESF: Paste Formulas only. If you just want to make a copy of the formulas and omit cell formatting etc., copy the cells with formulas, go elsewhere, press ALT + E and then S and F. And you get a copy of the formulas alone.
Bonus Shortcuts & Tricks:
Writing and editing formulas is such an important part of Excel that there are many other useful shortcuts and tricks. Here are a few of my favorites:
- F9: Evaluate selected portion of a formula. Select a portion of a formula and press F9 to evaluate it alone. See the results and debug easily. (related: debug formulas using F9)
- CTRL + ` : Show formulas. Very useful when explaining your worksheet to others. Press CTRL + ` (back quote, usually the key above tab on left) to on / off show formulas mode. (related: auditing formulas & spreadsheets)
- Use mouse to edit formula ranges: When you select a cell with formula and edit it (by pressing F2), you can see these blue, green, red rectangles around the cells to which the formula is talking. You can move these rectangles or resize them to edit the formula input ranges. Very useful and very time saving. (more: Using mouse to save time in Excel)
- Fill down / side ways: Once you have a formula in a cell, you can drag it down or sideways (using mouse) to fill the formula down or across.
What are your favorite shortcuts for writing / editing formulas?
I am sure there are tons more shortcuts that I have omitted. So go ahead share your favorite ones in comments. Teach us something new. Go.
Also check out: Comprehensive list of Excel keyboard shortcuts.
17 Responses to “Budget vs. Actual Profit Loss Report using Pivot Tables”
Good Work, Yogesh & Chandoo! Thanks.
Hi everybody,
first sorry I am late to say something about this topic;actually I was waiting last part
second I am not accountant I am an Engineer
third """"Very Important""" the idea is not about Loss but I am sure it is profit
Based on third it shows:
1- How to use EXCEL
2- How to use pivot TABLES
3- How to collect and arrange DATA
4- How to make reports
Many Thanks
Hi Yogesh and Chandoo,
Thank you for sharing your knowledge!
You guys are great!
thanks chandoo and yogesh, thanks for you lessons, are great!....i have a idea for a budget. I try to do it..... thanks for all
Thanks a lot for sharing the most powerful tool worldwide "knowledge"
Warm greetings from Peru
Hi -
This is a really great article because it's a simple and common thing you'd want to do with a pivot table but not at all obvious how to do it! So - muchas gracias to Chandoo and Yogesh!
One thing - I couldn't get past the group error in the sample file. I would click on ungroup but it didn't seem to have any effect. I'd appreciate it if anybody has any pointers here.
-Juanito
Hi Chandoo
I am also having the group error. Can't seem to ungroup? Appreciate if you explain further on the steps required in order to get to calculated items.
Many thanks and keep up the great work.
Cheers
Adam
Hi Chandoo,
I'm struggling resolving the problem depicted below:
I have a set of data, with (among others) a "Region" field (can be APJ, EMEA, or AMS), and a "Country" field.
Unfortunately, I need to group data by the following 4 Regions: APeJ, Japan, EMEA and AMS.
I first tried to make a pivot with Region and Country in the rows (or columns), and then group Country data as per the above.
Alas, as soon as I have a new Country that appear in my data set, my groupings are broken, and I have to redo the job of ungrouping, grouping etc.
I thought I could try to use calculated item, by adding first a new column to my dataset concatenating Region_Country, and create an "APeJ" calculated item that would sum all the "APJ_*" and substract the "APJ_Japan", but again, no clue, as I can't find a way to use any wild card in those formulas.
Given that I already found extremely helpful tips and tricks in your site that helped me manage that bunch of data, I'm pretty sure you'll have a bright idea on how I can solve that one!
Thanks in advance for your lights!
Hi Catherine...
In such cases, I advice using an additional column in the data itself. You can set-up a grouping table else where with country in first column, region in second column. And then in the data, you can add an extra column and use VLOOKUP to fetch the region based on the country.
Then feed this entire data (with extra column) to pivot table and use the extra column to group the data.
Hi Chandoo,
Thank you for your prompt answer.
I finally came to the same conclusion - after a rest 🙂 . I was probably too tired Friday evening (it was rather late), having spent hours in manipulating all my surveys data so as to pull rolling averages, make nice graphs and so on, and was trying to find a complex solution when there was a simple one.
Thanks again,
Catherine
Hey,
Great post!
I for example have different database structure with the following fields :
Date, Expense, Income, Sum (Income - Expense), Category (Sales, Cost of Goods and etc).
Creating a P&L report for the whole year works great. Including gross margin % and etc.
Though, creating P&L report by QTR/Month is becoming impossible since i get the following error : “This PivotTable report field is grouped. You cannot add calculated item to grouped filed.”
Is there a solution for this kind of problem?
Like Adam and Juanito, I also cannot ungroup.
Would appreciate it if you can add a few more lines and a screenshot or two on where to put the mouse cursor to ungroup.
Hi, I have figured out the ungrouping problem. One of the earlier steps was to group by month, if you pull the month back down to the column then right click and then select ungroup, then pull the month back up so you end up with just data source and budget/actual as the headings, then you can continue on.
To solve the ungroup problem, my method is:
Copy the "data" sheet to a whole new Excel workbook
and directly work on Part 6.
And since it is a fresh copy, Excel don't show me the "can't ungroup" problem. Hope this help.
Thank you Yogesh for this wonderful tutorial.
Kent, Malaysia
Just when i thought pivots were awesome i learn about inserting the calculated fields and that makes them more awesome. chandoo where have you been all my life.
Hello - your P&L pivot version has really impressed my boss and would like to use it. I have applied it for a actual vs budget vs forecast model I have created. One problem. In your variance above the operating profit percent % variance shows 33.8% but I want it to show (0.01) point or the true diff from prior budget.
I know I can add calculation to the side but boss would like to see it in pivot table.
Please help
Thanks
I have a further query which may solve my above dilemma. Is it possible to add a column that calculates percent increase. So in the example above a new column would be added to show variance %.
Any help would be appreciated.
Thanks