Excel tips
Select all cells with one click
Have hundreds (or even thousands) of rows of data—and need to select them all? You can give yourself a finger cramp from tons of endless clicking and scrolling. Or, you can use this simple trick to select all cells with one single click. All it takes is clicking on that light gray triangle that appears in the top left corner of your spreadsheet. Click it once, and every single cell in the spreadsheet will be selected. It’s as easy as that!
Instantly resize columns and rows
There’s nothing worse than having your text run outside of the width of the column. And, needing to click and drag to resize the column to the perfect width over and over again can be a pain. Fortunately, you can do this instantly. Place your mouse on the line between two column markers (C and D, for example) until you see a symbol that looks like two opposite-facing arrows. With that symbol, double click on that line that separates the columns, and the column will automatically be resized to fit the widest piece of text within that column. Note: The same hack can be used to adjust the height of rows!
Excel Shortcut Keys
Just like every software has keyboard shortcuts, excel has its own too. There are many of them but below are the most relevant and widely used. Enjoy!
- Ctrl + ; this shortcut helps you put the current date
- Ctrl + Shift + : this keyboard shortcut will put the time
- Ctrl + Shift + # if you want to change the format of the date, this is your shortcut key
- Ctrl + 5 will put a strike-through on a text in a cell
- Ctrl + 0 is used to hide the desired column; mostly the current one
- Ctrl + 9 is used to hide the desired row; mostly the current one you’re working on
- Ctrl + F6 will help you switch open windows
- Ctrl + ` for toggling the view in the sheet and show the formulas
- Ctrl + PageUp or PageDown quick-shift between the sheets in the currently open workbook
- F2 to edit the selected but mostly current one cell
- Shift + F10 opens the right-click menu for the cell you’re in
Insert Excel Data Into Word
If you want to insert excel data into words without creating a link-and-embed process, you can paste the data as a graphic. To do this, you can use Word’s paste special tool but you can also use Excel with the following steps:
- Go to the Home tab at the top
- Then select the Copy menu
- You will find the Copy as Picture option
- Using that, you can paste it into words
Inserting Screenshots
If you want to insert a screenshot into your worksheet, just follow the following steps:
- Go to the Insert tab
- Select Screenshot option
- Then you will find a drop-down menu directing you to thumbnails of all open programs
- Then pick your preferred one and resize it for a better look
Inserting Graphics in Charts
By now, you should know that a spreadsheet comes with an option to add or insert a graphic element like chart, bar, etc. If you don’t know how to, the following steps are an easy walk-through.
- Select Series Options menu
- Select Picture or texture fill
- The steps are simple. 2. Do not mix too many graphics as it can be impossible to read.
Multiple Cells with Same Data
Sometimes you will encounter a situation where you have to write the same thing repeatedly and doing that manually would be excruciating. But don’t worry with easy excel tips and tricks, you can avoid that and also get the desired result. The following steps allow you that:
- Click the entire set of cells
- Then type it on the last cell
- Then hit Ctrl+Enter This trick also works with formulas.
Paste Special Transpose
When you want to change your rows and columns but there are a lot of them, moving one by one would be a tiresome thing to do. Here is how you simply can save your time to do that:
- Copy the desired data
- Select Paste Special
- Click Transpose Box
- Then click OK to a pop-up option to change the orientation
- The final result, Columns are rows, rows are columns
Text to Columns
Say you’ve got a column full of names, first next to last, but you want two columns that break them out.
- Select the data
- Go to the Data tab
- Click Text to Columns
- You will find options of separating them:
Selecting Data Set
There are much faster ways to select a data set than using the mouse and dragging the cursor, especially in a spreadsheet that contains several rows or columns.
- Click on the cell you want
- Hold down Ctrl+Shift
- You will get four options:
- Mix up and combine the directions.
