Excel tips

In order to get the most out of Microsoft Excel, there are many tips and tricks that can make your Excel experience more productive and efficient. You may find these Excel tips handy:

Learn to work in Excel using the keyboard only. It might sound trivial, but it saves a lot of time if you know all the keyboard shortcuts. You would not have to use the mouse to access multi-layered menus as frequently. You regularly need the Insert function; to bring up the Insert dialog, use the Shift+F3 shortcut. To insert a hyperlink, Ctrl+K takes you there straight away. On an existing hyperlink, this shortcut becomes Edit Hyperlink.

The Macro dialog box is called up regularly to create, run, edit or delete macros. This is quickly accessed using Alt+F8. If you have many objects in your spreadsheet, you might find the Ctrl+6 shortcut handy; it alternates between displaying the objects, hiding the objects and displaying the object placeholders only.

To calculate all the worksheets in all the current open workbooks, use the Ctrl+Alt+F9 shortcut. This recalculates all worksheets, whether they have changed since the last calculation was performed or not.

For quick selection of an entire column or row, use the Ctrl+Spacebar shortcut (to select an entire column) or Shift+Spacebar (to select an entire row). Use Shift+F10 to display the shortcut menu for any currently selected item.

The Paste Special function is accessed by the Ctrl+Alt+V keyboard shortcut. Keep in mind that this function is only available after you have copied or cut cell contents, text or an object in another program or on a worksheet.

Lastly, if you want to format cells, the Format Cells dialog box can be called up instantly with Ctrl+1. There are many more Excel tips, but these keyboard shortcuts are an essential starting point towards Excel productivity.