Whether you are doing digital marketing, traditional marketing or even administrative work, excel spread sheets are one of the key programs you will come to use. And every marketer will agree with me that there’s just not enough time for everything. Therefore I found some simple excel shortcuts to share to save some of those little precious minutes that could amount up till a lot of your time in the long run. Below is a list of Tips and Tricks in excel that could really save up quite a lot of your time every day, especially for work that involve intensive usage of excel spreadsheets.
Excel has the ability to recognize a pattern in your data, and is able to automatically copy it to other selected cells. So enter about 2 to 3 lines of information that establish a pattern such as numbers, days of the week or months. And highlight those rows and drag down to see the results.
When you are using excel, I am pretty sure you would come across numerical strings of data that are too long and are displayed as #### entries. So to easily adjust the column to the width of its content, just click on the column’s header to select the whole column or hold down CTRL to select multiple columns and move your cursor to the right side on the header where your cursor will turn into a symbol with 2 arrows. Then double click to see the columns you have selected changing its width to fit the content.
Let’s say you have projects with thousands and thousands of rows and you want to move down to the bottom of the column to edit some data. Well, scrolling could be one way. But there’s a shortcut that brings you straight to the bottom of your last row entry. And to do that hold the CTRL button and press the down arrow ↓ on your keyboard to immediately jump to the bottom. Press “CTRL + ↑” to jump back up to the top cell. You could combine this with scrolling too if want to edit data that are more towards the bottom or top.
And If you want to select the whole column and go to the bottom cell at the same time, you could combine this “CTRL + ↑” shortcut with the “Shift” key like the example shown in the animation below.
If you have a formula and it doesn’t seems to be adding up correctly, there’s a shortcut key that is able to display the formula used in a cell. Simply by holding down “CTRL + `(acute accent key on the far left, directly below esc key)” you can now see the formula you created to troubleshoot them.
When you’re troubleshooting misbehaving numbers first look at the formulas. Display the formula used in a cell by hitting just two keys: “Ctrl + `(acute accent key)” – this key is furthest to the left on the row with the number keys. When shifted it is the tilde (~).
Format Painter can be really useful as it allows you to duplicate the whole formatting of a cell into other cells with just a few clicks on the mouse. So like the animation below, just by double clicking on Format Painter, you can copy the formatting to any cell or multiple cells. This saves up a lot of your time.
Here is another basic shortcut which allows you to switch between worksheets. Let’s say your projects have many worksheets like the picture below. You can press down “CTRL + PGDN” to switch to the next worksheet and “CTRL + PGUP” to switch back.
This is one of my favorite shortcuts that allow you to quickly create or delete columns which will save up a little time. So by Pressing down “CTRL + SHIFT + ‘=’(equals key)” will allow you to open the menu to add a column or “CTRL + ‘-’ (minus key)” will open menu to delete the column.
Managing columns and rows in your spreadsheet is an all-day task. Whether adding or deleting, you can save a little time when you use this keyboard shortcut. “CTRL + ‘-’ (minus key)” will delete the column your cursor is in and “CTRL + SHIFT + ‘=’(equal key)” will add a new column.
With this shortcut, you wont have to type out your formula over and over again in new cells. This shortcut allows you to fill up the entire selected column with the same formula and even adjust the data specific to the different rows.
So here’s what you do: create formula in the first cells followed by moving your cursor to the right corner of that same cell and double click on the formula when cursor turns into a plus symbol. This will allow the formula in the first cell to populate the other cells below.
With this shortcut, you wont have to type out your formula over and over again in new cells. This shortcut allows you to fill up the entire selected column with the same formula and even adjust the data specific to the different rows.
So here’s what you do: create formula in the first cells followed by moving your cursor to the right corner of that same cell and double click on the formula when cursor turns into a plus symbol. This will allow the formula in the first cell to populate the other cells below.
Basic formula SUM=() can now also be used easily by pressing “ALT + = (equals)”. Simply highlight the column you want to add up, followed by hitting “ALT + =” and voilà your results almost instantaneously.