Microsoft Excel is one of those programs that is far more versatile than many people believe. Certainly it allows you to enter and analyze data, but you also can use it for accounting, planning, tracking data, making calendars, creating a budget and much more. While many people know how to use the most basic features of Excel, here are a few cool tricks that you might not have known.
Highlighting data is something we often have to do, especially if you need to cut and paste or copy and paste the data. To highlight quickly, tap into the first cell of a row and just hit your shift and spacebar. The whole row will highlight and you can copy or cut the data.
If you need to highlight all the data on an entire spreadsheet, such as if you wish to copy or cut all the data and move it someplace else, there is a much easier way to do this than dragging your mouse across all the cells of data. You just click in the first cell and then hit F8. From there, you just click on the last cell of the spreadsheet, and all of the cells will be highlighted. You can do this for just one column or the whole spreadsheet. When you want this function to cease, just hit F8 again.
One annoyance is that when you add a great deal of data and you start to move below about the 38th row, you lose the visibility of your header. That might be fine if you just have two or three columns of data, but if you are entering data into a large amount of columns, it is sometimes tough to remember which column is which. For this reason, it is nice to have the header visible all of the time.
Fortunately, you can address the problem quickly. First look at the top right area of your spreadsheet, over by where the scroll bar is located. Above that you will notice two arrows, one is thin and points down and the other is full and points up. However your cursor between these two arrows on the little box in between. Your cursor will transform from a plus sign or arrow into an up and down arrows with two lines in the middle of them. Click and then gently drag down until you see a duplicate header appear and then stop dragging. The very top header will remain visible no matter how far down you scroll on your main spreadsheet page.
If you need to organize data a certain way, you can use the handy sort function. At the top of the page, you will notice a variety of tabs - Home, Insert, Page Layout, etc. Under Home, you will find Sort & Filter. You can create your own custom sorts or just go with alphabetical sorts. You can also filter columns to show just certain data which can be very helpful. This is just the tip of the iceberg as there are literally hundreds of shortcuts and functions available in Excel. For more help and hints, click on the question mark at the top of the Excel page. It is surrounded by a blue arrow and links to the Microsoft Excel help system.
Highlighting data is something we often have to do, especially if you need to cut and paste or copy and paste the data. To highlight quickly, tap into the first cell of a row and just hit your shift and spacebar. The whole row will highlight and you can copy or cut the data.
If you need to highlight all the data on an entire spreadsheet, such as if you wish to copy or cut all the data and move it someplace else, there is a much easier way to do this than dragging your mouse across all the cells of data. You just click in the first cell and then hit F8. From there, you just click on the last cell of the spreadsheet, and all of the cells will be highlighted. You can do this for just one column or the whole spreadsheet. When you want this function to cease, just hit F8 again.
One annoyance is that when you add a great deal of data and you start to move below about the 38th row, you lose the visibility of your header. That might be fine if you just have two or three columns of data, but if you are entering data into a large amount of columns, it is sometimes tough to remember which column is which. For this reason, it is nice to have the header visible all of the time.
Fortunately, you can address the problem quickly. First look at the top right area of your spreadsheet, over by where the scroll bar is located. Above that you will notice two arrows, one is thin and points down and the other is full and points up. However your cursor between these two arrows on the little box in between. Your cursor will transform from a plus sign or arrow into an up and down arrows with two lines in the middle of them. Click and then gently drag down until you see a duplicate header appear and then stop dragging. The very top header will remain visible no matter how far down you scroll on your main spreadsheet page.
If you need to organize data a certain way, you can use the handy sort function. At the top of the page, you will notice a variety of tabs - Home, Insert, Page Layout, etc. Under Home, you will find Sort & Filter. You can create your own custom sorts or just go with alphabetical sorts. You can also filter columns to show just certain data which can be very helpful. This is just the tip of the iceberg as there are literally hundreds of shortcuts and functions available in Excel. For more help and hints, click on the question mark at the top of the Excel page. It is surrounded by a blue arrow and links to the Microsoft Excel help system.
About the Author:
Frankline Bell enjoys blogging reviews on computer repairs and support companies. To get further information about the best computer repair Beaverton professionals or to find out more about Portland computer repair services, please check out the GeeksAKnockin.com site today.
No comments:
Post a Comment