I could barely sleep last night. Even though I came home, my heart was in that hospital room only. I got up at 5:30, and came to see my wife and kids by 7:30. Now that they all are sleeping, I can quickly whip an excel post, to help you make twins, clones and duplicates.
- To repeat last action: Press F4. Apparently this is the first thing the new cell did. Lets say you inserted a new row. To add one more row, you just need to press F4. Excel will repeat the last action, thus making one more row. (PS: in Excel 2007, F4 will yeild different and limited outcomes compared to excel 2003)
- To clone a chart, drawing or other objects: Hold down CTRL and click-drag the chart (or object). You will get an identical twin of it in no time. (BONUS: Holding down ALT as well will align the chart to the grid.)
- To clone value from above cell: press ctrl+’ This will make a twin from the above cell. (99 more tips)
- To make a twin from a range of cells: Select the range. Hold down CTRL and click-drag on the selection border. Drag it wherever you want.
- To Duplicate formats from one range to another: Some times the data may be different, but the formats should be same. Like my kids, even though they have different genders, they look pretty much same now. To do this, you can use the format painter tool in excel. See the demo:
- To make a live clone of a range of cells or chart: use excel camera tool. Camera will create a live preview of one range of cells as an image. So whenever the range’s contents change, the image is updated too.
Gotta go, the sister is trying to outwit brother with tongue gestures. I must see who wins this round…
PS: share your twin, duplicate and clone shortcuts and power-tips using comments.
3 Responses to “CP049: Don’t do data dumps!!!”
Your title got me nervous because I'm all about data dumps, but not for attaching graphics to data dumps. My reason for using data dumps is when someone is trying to do analysis and their starting point is a report that's formatted in a way for a human to read. I instruct them to stop with the report and go get a data dump: just rows and columns and rows and columns.
Agreed, nearly all of my reports start with 100+ lines of simple table data.
That way you can build your functionality around pulling information from that tabled information.
Yes yes!