All articles with 'quick tip' Tag

Here is a quick Pivot table tip. Let’s say your work at ACME inc. requires some fancy pants analysis of product sales. Imagine looking at below data & trying to find out the earliest & latest date for each product sale.

Of course, we can concoct a version of MINIFS & MAXIFS to answer the question. But why bother, when you can answer the question with just a few clicks.

So here is a news from strange but true department. Microsoft Excel blamed for gene study errors [bbc.com].

Microsoft’s Excel has been blamed for errors in academic papers on genomics.
Researchers trying to raise awareness of the issue claim that the spreadsheet software automatically converts the names of certain genes into dates.
Gene symbols like SEPT2 (Septin 2) were found to be altered to “September 2”.

Aah, classic!

This is what happens when you spend countless hours learning genome sequencing and very little about the software tools where your data goes. May be we need clippy back to warn people about such sticky situations.

Let’s kick start our Awesome August 2016 with a simple but very useful set of shortcuts. 5 shortcuts, one for each weekday.

1. Monday ALT + M N: Open name manager. Very handy, if you have quite a few range names and want to edit / manage them. Remember, this is a sequence shortcut, that means, you press ALT M, let go of both keys and then press N.
2. Tuesday CTRL + T: Create a new table from data in current region. For more on tables, check out our Introduction to Excel Tables page.
3. Wednesday CTRL + W: Close the current workbook, while keeping Excel open.
4. Thursday ALT + T O: Opens Excel options. Very easy to remember too.
5. Friday CTRL F: Fridays can be hard to concentrate. Use CTRL+F to find what you want in the current workbook. Use CTRL+H if you wish to do a find replace.

Here is a quick & awesome way to make your dashboards sexy. Add an on / off switch to your conditional formats.

Take a look at above demo to understand what I mean.

Ever wanted to show your workbook to someone and felt that you had less screen real estate? This tip will help you get more out of your workbook.

So how to get 50% more space for your workbooks?

Simple, just follow these steps.

Here is an interesting scenario.

Let’s say you are looking at a time, like 9:42 AM and want to know which 15 minute slot it fits into. The answer is 9:30 – 9:45. But how would you get this answer thru Excel formulas?

Let’s say you have data in a worksheet in various ranges, and you want sum up each range at the bottom.

Something like this:

How to do all this one shot?

Simple. We use multi-select & ALT=

Here is a quick tip to reduce the time you spend on chart formatting – use chart styles & color themes.

Excel offers various pre-defined color schemes and chart styles. Using them is very simple.

1. Select your chart
2. Go to Chart Design ribbon
3. Click on the style or color scheme you want.
4. Your chart changes instantly.

Let’s keep this simple & short.

Whenever you are editing cells or formulas, the usual sequence is like this:

1. Double click on the cell you want to edit
2. For existing cells: Go to the left most / right most part and start typing
3. For blank cells: start typing right away

Here is a faster sequence:

Read on…

Let’s say you made a chart to show actual and forecast values. By default, both values look in same color. But we would like to separate forecast values by showing them in another color.

If you are a seasoned Excel user, you may be thinking, “Oh, that’s easy. I will just create 2 sets of data (one for actual and one for forecast), make a chart from them and apply separate colors.”

But here is a really simple way to get the same effect.

Use a semi-transparent box to mask the forecast values, as shown above. Read on to learn how to do this.

Here is a simple & effective tip on charting.

Give your charts descriptive & bold titles.

How to set up title that are smart & descriptive?

Simple, follow below steps.

1. Create the title you want in a cell
2. Select the chart title
3. Go to formula bar, press = and point to the cell with title
4. Press enter.

Working with multiple charts (or drawing shapes / images) can be a very slow process. But here is a secret to boost your productivity.

Use selection pane & select object tools

Selection Pane & Select Objects?

If you have never heard of these, don’t worry. These are 2 very powerful features hidden in Excel. Once you know how to unlock them, you will never look back.

How to use selection pane & select object tools to work with charts faster – Video

In this video, understand how to use these powerful features to work with charts faster.

Making your workbooks, charts, dashboards & presentations beautiful is a time consuming process. It is a mix of art & craft. Naturally, we spend hours polishing that important slideshow or visualization. But do you know about simple features in Excel that can save you a lot of time and help you create gorgeous output?

To make friends in a new town hit the bars – Old saying.
To make sense of a new data-set, make bar charts – New saying.

Bar charts (or column charts if you like your data straight up) are vital in data analysis. They are easy to make. But one problem. By default, a bar chart show the original data in reverse order.

See the above example.

Unfortunately, we humans read from top to bottom, not the other way around.

Conditional formatting is one of the most powerful & awesome features of Excel. It is very easy to setup. Naturally, people use it extensively. But the default conditional formatting rules can clutter your reports. Here is one tip that can declutter your reports.

Just show the formatting, not values.

See the above report.