
Cut through the 500+ functions, and you’re left with 100 or so truly useful functions and features for the majority of modern knowledge workers. Though every Excel feature has a use case, no single person uses every Excel feature themselves. The benefit of using is Excel is that you can combine different types of data from all kinds of sources.Last year we put together The Definitive 100 Most Useful Excel Tips, for which we consulted Excel experts and looked at tens of thousands of test results and course usage data. Import Data Into Excel Correctly. You can also use CTRL + SHIFT + to select your entire data set. Then use the arrow keys to get all the data either above, below or adjacent to the cell you’re in.
Use Excel How To Post Accounting
Paste Special (10 minutes to learn)Learn how to post accounting transactions and create financial statements using Excel spreadsheets. If, like many, you’re stuck on what to learn next in Excel, you might want to look at this 2×2 matrix, which factors in usefulness and time needed to learn a skill. These ten are listed in decreasing order of utility from our top 100 list.
Often, companies will use Excel sheets in the same way as other documents like PDFs and Word files. To test if a number.Creating electronic signatures in Microsoft Excel is a straightforward process. AND returns either TRUE or FALSE. But we often carry over a format we don’t want, or we copy a formula over, when instead we just want a value.The Excel AND function is a logical function used to require more than one condition at the same time. To add an add-in to your Microsoft Excel Online spreadsheet, click the Insert menu in Excel Online and select Office Add-ins to browse the store right inside your spreadsheets.Copy and paste is one of the simplest and most used functions in Excel.
The shortcut (Ctrl, shift, +) is pretty handy, especially as you can toggle the + to add multiple rows. Add Multiple Rows (2 minutes to learn)We often need to add new rows between existing rows. Alt+E+S+V is the shortcut to just paste values — probably the most common use of Paste Special. After you’ve copied your cell (Ctr+C) hit Ctrl+Alt+V (or go to the Clipboard section of the Home ribbon, or Edit > Paste Special) to bring up Paste Special and make your selection. Paste Special enables you to pick which elements of the copied cell you bring over. Businesses often use Excel, a Microsoft spreadsheet application often installed by default as part of the Microsoft Office.These little frustrations can take time to fix, which is why Paste Special is so… special.
‘ABC-00001’ to ‘ABC-00010’ and you only need the numbers after the ‘-’. Flash Fill automatically fills your data when it senses a pattern.Suppose you have a list of product numbers in the first ten cells of column A, e.g. Flash Fill (30 minutes to learn)Excel developed a mind of its own in 2013 with this feature.
Or, get it going manually by clicking Data > Flash Fill, or Ctrl+E.Flash Fill is like magic, and can be used in many different scenarios. Just hit the Enter key to accept. If Flash Fill is turned on (File Options, Advanced) just start to type the next product number in the cell below and Flash Fill will recognize the pattern and fill down the remaining product numbers for you. Now, this is much faster and will impress people.Establish the pattern by typing ‘00001’ into the first blank cell. Pre-2013 this was possible, but relied on a combination of functions (FIND, LEFT, &, etc).
Mastering these functions will not only make you look like an Excel whiz to your colleagues and manager, but can make a tedious, mundane task quick and simple. INDEX and MATCH used in combination help you extract the data you need from a large dataset efficiently and precisely. Used separately, these functions are invaluable, but it’s when you combine them that their true power is unleashed. INDEX-MATCH (45 minutes to learn)Aside from VLOOKUP (which looks up the value in one column and returns a corresponding value from another column), INDEX and MATCH are the most widely used and most powerful tools in Excel for performing lookups. Flash Fill is a jaw-dropping feature.

It certainly needs some practice, but it’s worth getting your head around as it is more flexible and more powerful than a VLOOKUP. This is the perfect scenario for INDEX and MATCH.=INDEX(Profit column,MATCH(Lookup Value,Product Name column,0))Here’s a good way to remember how it works:=INDEX (Column I want a return value from, MATCH (My Lookup Value, Column I want to Lookup against, Enter “0” )) (Zero gives you an exact match, you can match against less than (-1) or greater than (1) as well.)At first and even second glance, INDEX and MATCH looks complex. The product name sits to the right of the profit and so VLOOKUP would not work. In this scenario, we are using the product name (our lookup value) to look up the profit.
The two work in tandem very nicely, and you cycle through iterations of your work until you find the right one. What many people don’t know is that Ctrl Y does the opposite — redo. If you aren’t using Ctrl Z to undo mistakes in Excel, then you should be. But did you know you can select the cell at the end of a row or column and press Alt + to do this functions in seconds? CTRL Z / CTRL Y (1 minutes to learn)This is your Excel get-out-of-jail-free card. SUM (2 minutes to learn)This is one of the first functions you’re likely to learn in Excel — how to sum a row or column.
It’s found on the Data tab in the Data Tools section of the Ribbon.If you just want to highlight duplicates, you can do this using Conditional Formatting. Our advice is to remove the values you want to dedupe and place them in another sheet. Remove Duplicates does exactly what you’d expect — it removes the duplicates in any given range of data.
Identify the columns and rows of the area you want to freeze. You can freeze just the top row, first column or any number of either. Freeze Panes (15 minutes to learn)Ever scroll down a large table of data only to forget which columns are which? Freeze Panes is the answer here. (Or find it on the Home ribbon under Styles).
The first is when creating an Absolute Reference: F4 toggles you through the various options. F4 (10 minutes to learn)There are two especially satisfying ways to use F4 in Excel. Go to the View tab and Freeze Panes in the Window section.

