5 Quick Excel Efficiency Tips

Excel is one of those powerful packages that I use because I have to, not because I love spreadsheets so much. Anything that can get me out of Excel and doing something much more fun has got to be a good thing. Here are some tips to make your Excel use faster and more productive!

  1. Cycle through open spreadsheets - If you hold CTRL while hitting Page Up and Page Down (in Macs hold Fn also) you can go from one sheet to the next, just like switching open windows with Alt-Tab
  2. Make tabs stand out - You have probably worked out that you can name tabs, but did you know in certain versions you can color them too? Right-click and select Tab Color.
  3. Insert the current date - Hold CTRL and hit + (; on Mac) to enter today’s date into the current cell. If you want the cell to always contain the current date, rather than the date right now, use =NOW() formula.
  4. Instant charts - Just press F11 and you can create a chart from the currently selected data
  5. Quick sum - Have you seen that angular E like button on your toolbar? That is the “sum” button, hit that to sum the currently selected data rather than typing the formula =SUM()

I just know you can do better. Got Excel tips? Add yours to the comments!

Posted on June 17, 2008 by Chris Garrett 
Filed Under Excel Tips

Comments

4 Responses to “5 Quick Excel Efficiency Tips”

  1. ian fernando on June 17th, 2008 2:37 pm

    nice great tips. i have a good amount of excel knowledge and use it for a lot of tracking and disssecting of keywords as well. i even creat youtube tutorials on it for my readers. glad to see others use the power of excel

  2. Blaine Moore on June 17th, 2008 4:43 pm

    I’m not a power user of Excel by any means, so I only have 1 real tip to contribute and 1 fun one that you probably know about and probably can’t do since nobody uses that version anymore…

    First, drag the little bars above the vertical scrollbar or to the right of the horizontal scrollbars to lock a number of rows/columns into place (as appropriate.) Then go to Window->Freeze Panes and you will have omnipresent header and sidebar rows. It makes it much easier to remember what field you are looking at, especially when working with numerical data.

    For a fun tip, if you still have Excel 97, then go to cell X97:L97 and click in it. Press the tab key, then hold ctrl-shift and press the chart wizard toolbar button. If you have DirectDraw installed you get treated to a flight simulator, and if not then you get to see the credits. The flight simulator is more fun.

  3. Tony Rose on June 17th, 2008 11:45 pm

    There are so many, but this one may be the best:

    CTRL + ALT + Arrows = go directly to the end of cells with a value. Great for highlighting a lot of cells in a column or row quickly.

  4. 5 Quick Excel Efficiency Tips - Learn Excel on June 24th, 2008 2:45 pm

    [...] Original post by Chris Garrett [...]

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