35 shortcuts & tricks to make you an #AWESOME Data Analyst
Analyst’s life is busy. We have to gather data, clean it up, analyze it, dig the stories buried in it, present them, convince our bosses about the truth, gather more evidence, run tests, simulations or scenarios, share more insights, grab a cup of coffee and start all over again with a different problem.
So today let me share with you 35 shortcuts, productivity hacks and tricks to help you be even more awesome.
Top 5 keyboard shortcuts for Excel Charts
We all know that learning a few keyboard shortcuts can speedup your Excel game. Most pro users rely on a handful shortcuts when working with large spreadsheets. But when it comes to charting, we automatically reach for mouse. But do you know that you can use few simple shortcuts to do most day to day chart related things?
Ready for top 5 keyboard shortcuts for Excel charts? Read on.
Copy Paste Visible Cells only (Two more ways to do it)
Last week, we talked about how to copy and paste visible cells alone (ie exclude any filtered rows or hidden columns etc.) In the comments section many of you suggested two more ways to deal with this annoying problem. Let’s take a look them.
Copy & paste visible cells only [Excel Trick]
Here is something annoying with Excel.
Open any Excel file with few columns of data. Hide some of those columns (select the columns and press CTRL+0). Now, copy a few rows of data. Paste it else where. Excel will paste the values in hidden columns too. We thought Excel would omit the values in hidden columns.
What the filter Excel?!? I thought we were friends, but you annoy me with some of these quirks.
Jo’s first keyboard shortcut
Jo, my lovely wife quit her job as my partner in crime at Chandoo.org recently and took up a lucrative position at NZ govt. agency. The other day I asked her “how was your day?” when she got home. She smiled and said, “I learned my first Excel shortcut!”.
Guess what it is?
F4.
That is right. The mighty F4 key. You can use it to repeat any action.
Jo was using it to insert rows in her workbook. After inserting first row (using CTRL+ of course), she would press F4 to add more rows as needed.
Use CTRL to make copies of worksheets quickly
The other day, I found myself making copies of a templated report worksheet. After trying the usual route of “right click on source sheet, select move or copy, check create a copy and press OK” a few times, I thought “well that is asinine.” So I figured, may be CTRL+Drag will create a copy. And what do you know, it does.
So that is our quick tip for the day. Whenever you need to make a copy of something, simply hold CTRL key and drag the thing.
It works for charts, drawing shapes, worksheets and even ranges.
Weekend open mic – Share your one hand Excel shortcuts
At Chandoo.org, we are big believers of keyboard shortcuts. There are several posts (1,2,3,4, more and even more) discussing useful Excel shortcuts. Today I want to introduce a new kind of keyboard shortcuts. One hand shortcuts.
One hand shortcuts – Half the work, double the fun
The idea is simple. When you can use only one hand to complete the shortcut key presses, it is called as a one hand shortcut.