Knowing tips, tricks and shortcuts in business is a great way to save yourself a bit of time and help you to work smarter. I love using shortcuts and finding out new ways to save time when using Microsoft Office, so I’ve included a few quick tips to use when in Excel.
Highlighting the whole spreadsheet
Sometimes it’s handy to be able to highlight the whole spreadsheet but when you have a lot of data in your workbook it sometimes feels like it takes ages to highlight all the information but there is a simple trick. See that little box above the number 1 and before A – click that and it will highlight your whole sheet!
Autosum
You have about 50 lines and you need to add it all up to find out the total. Of course Microsoft have thought of this and have an Autosum function to work it out for you! But there are multiple ways to use this function. My favourites are to either click onto the cell below what you want to total and hit Autosum (on the Home ribbon) or you can highlight the data you want to total and hit the Autosum function and it will pop it below the list.
Change number format
Excel will default to enter data into numerical format. If you want to change to currency for example, you would hit Ctrl + Shift + 3 from your keyboard. If you wanted to add decimal places hit Ctrl + Shift + 1 – for percent hit Ctrl + Shift + 5 and so on.
Switching between sheets
It’s something that a lot of us end up doing, having multiple documents open at one time. A
quick and easy way to shift between these is hit the Alt and tab key at the same time and then use your directional arrows to select which sheet you want.
Autofill
If you are using a value such as the days of the week, rather than typing every single one, type the first day and either double click on the right hand corner or click the corner and drag it down. The days will automatically appear for you and save you from typing them all out.
Jumping through your worksheet
You have finished a massive spreadsheet and now need to go back to the top, instead of dragging the bar to the top or hitting the up key, hold down Ctrl and the up key and this will take you back to the top. You can use Ctrl and down to get to the end and Ctrl left/right to move across the sheet.
These are just a few basic tips to save you a bit of time but if there are any other tips or questions you have on functions within Excel or shortcuts you would like to know then why not drop me an email at info@njrvirtualpa.co.uk or give me a call on 07538 715537.
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