Microsoft Excel: Some Helpful Tips

By Frankline Bell


If you have Microsoft Office installed on your home computer, this means you have a copy of Microsoft Excel. This is a highly versatile program offering more than for its user than simply being a program for data entry. It is an excellent accounting tool; you can use it to create budgets and calendars, as well as for planning and many other tasks. While you might not be aware of some of the basic features, read on to discover a few helpful tricks and shortcuts.

If you have entered many rows and columns of data but need to copy and paste it someplace else, such as another spreadsheet, most of us click, hold and drag to select all of the information. If you have a large amount of data, this can be time consuming. To skip that, just click inside the row and tap the shift key and the spacebar. This will highlight the whole row automatically, which you can then cut, copy or paste elsewhere.

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.

You might have noticed that once you move beyond row 38 in excel, that you can no longer see the first row of data. As this is your header, it can be difficult to continue entering data when you can't see for what each column has been designated. Keeping a header in place is a helpful tool for those using Excel.

You can create a second header that will appear all of the time. Go over to the right edge and find the scroll bar for the spreadsheet. Above that is an up arrow or triangle that is filled in, and above that is a box with a line in it. Place your cursor over this box and wait until the cursor looks like two up and down arrows with two lines in between arrows. Click and hold and a dark line will appear. Move this arrow down slightly and slowly and you will see a second header appear. Release the mouse and this header will stay in place and you will be able to see it the whole time you enter data, even after row 38.

Microsoft Excel offers hundreds of short-cuts and functions, including the ability sort data or filter data. To sort, you can go up to the Sort & Filter function on the Home tab. This allows you to sort alphabetically, reverse alphabetically or to create your own custom sort. You also can place a filter in order to view just one set of data at a time. The best way to learn about all of the functions of Excel is to click on the question mark in the blue circle that is located on the top right corner of your Excel spreadsheet. From here, you will be linked to the Excel Help system. You can ask questions, learn keyboard shortcuts and more.




About the Author:



No comments:

Post a Comment