Microsoft excel essential hints and tips to kick start your excel skills

Microsoft Excel Essential Hints and Tips Fundamental hints and tips to kick start your Excel skills Microsoft Excel Essential Hints and Tips Fundamental hints and tips to kick start your Excel skills.

Fundamental hints and tips to kick start your Excel skills

By Diane GriffithsPublished by Diane GriffithsCopyright 2015 Diane Griffiths

Disclaimer

The information contained in this book is for general information purposes only While Iendeavour to keep the information up to date and correct, I make no representations orwarranties of any kind, express or implied, about the completeness, accuracy, reliability,suitability or availability with respect to the book or the information, products, services, orrelated graphics contained within the book for any purpose Any reliance you place onsuch information is therefore strictly at your own risk

Why is this?

Well - Excel provides the tools, but doesn’t tell you how to use them You can read aboutthe functionality of Excel and try and figure out what to use, but how do you know what toapply and when? The Learn Excel Visually (LEV) journey is here to take you through theessentials of the Excel process; set up your spreadsheet, capture and structure dataefficiently, cleanse it, analyse it meaningfully and present it with visual oomph There are

no complicated macros or convoluted functionality on the LEV journey, I teach what youneed to know, not what you don’t

What I tend to find with Excel textbooks is that they give you a lot of information, it’s allvery good information but I don’t use most of it Therefore the idea of these short handybite-size books is to provide you with what I have found to be most useful elements ofExcel within my day-to-day work and life I don’t tell you about all the bells and whistles– just what you need on a daily basis These ebooks are suitable for anyone who is looking

to learn Excel and wants to increase their productivity and efficiency, both at work andhome Please bear in mind I don’t cover all functionality of all areas, the point is that Istrip out anything that’s not useful and only highlight the functionality that I believe isuseful on a daily basis Don’t buy a huge textbook which you’ll never fully read, pick anebook which is most relevant to your current learning; read it, apply it and then get onwith your day

What’s in it for Me?

I’m assuming that you will already know the very basics of using Excel; open, close, basicdata entry This book will give you new skills to super-charge your spreadsheet aptitude

Display management

Next we look at display management; this considers your workspace rather than your data.How can you set up Excel to optimise your visual working screen and use Excelefficiently

Printing and sharing

Once you have an amazing spreadsheet may need to print or share this data Differentscreens and printers have different settings, but I’ll give you some key things to watch-outfor in order to share your data in the best way

Bonus 1 - Make it Idiot Proof

A short section on how to protect your workbook from user error

As it says in the title; my favourite Excel shortcuts

About Me

Excel is such powerful tool; you really can do almost anything you want with it Howeverthat’s not always a good thing! Throughout my career most of my roles have involvedusing Excel to a large extent, I’ve had to come up with creative solutions to complexproblems which allow users to solve, track and improve their daily processes in a simpleway Many of my spreadsheets started simple, got complex and then I had to pull it back

to the simple level The trouble with complex spreadsheets is that they break, get forgottenabout and almost always provide at least some incorrect data at some point

I have various levels of experience which allow me to approach Excel from many differentangles:

VisiCalc In the early 1990s Lotus 123 was very popular, I remember using it myself.However in the mid-1980s Microsoft launched Excel which became the popularspreadsheet that we all use today Excel went through many versions and I remember quite

a few of them, I remember that the 2007 version caused a bit of a fuss by introducing aribbon rather than simple drop-down menus and toolbars A lot of people didn’t reallyagree with the ribbon, but I loved it straight-away – it’s much more visual Then 2010 and

2013 Excel came out, which are very similar but have some new features andimprovements

Which version do I have?

You can either go to ‘help’ in your menu bar or if you don’t have a ‘help’ go to ‘File’ >

‘help’ and you should be able to see the version

Throughout this book when I take you through examples I will be talking through the

2010 version of Excel However from 2007 onwards the location of most of thefunctionality will be very similar so hopefully you will still be able to follow the stepseven if you don’t have the 2010 version of Excel

Excel 97-2003 will not be able to open the xlsx format So if you are using an old version

of Excel, check the format if you are having trouble opening it

If you aren’t sure which format a certain file is in you can right-click that file withinWindows Explorer and click ‘Properties’ Under the ‘General’ tab you will see ‘Type offile:’ this will tell you which file format you are working with, for example, ‘MicrosoftExcel Worksheet (.xlsx)’

Excel 2007+ can open any of the above formats and for the most part you’ll probably beworking with xlsx

Quick Glossary

Most of you will already understand the basic elements of Excel but I want to use thissection to clarify some key Excel terminology to ensure we are on the same page

Menu = The list of items along the top of the screen; for example, file, insert, page layoutetc…

Ribbon = Ribbon is like an expanded menu It depicts all the features of Excel in an easy

to understand pictorial form Since Excel has 1000s of features, they are grouped in toseveral ribbons For example, the ‘insert’ ribbon has functions grouped into; clipboard,font, alignment, number, styles etc…

Formula bar = Next to the Name box, also underneath the Ribbon The formula bar showsyou the contents of a selected cell, particularly useful if you want to see a calculationwithin a cell and not just the output of the calculation

Spreadsheet = A method of spreading information across a sheet of paper - the screenrepresents a piece of paper with grid lines

Purpose

The first thing you need to know is the purpose of your spreadsheet This plays a key role

in how to design and develop it

Start off by knowing what your outputs need to be What do you need to get out of yourspreadsheet? Do you just need to capture and track data, or do you need to capture it soyou are able to carry out certain calculations or provide reports?

I find it helps to work backwards; ensure you are clear about the purpose of the

Let’s step through the process

1 - Define

You should be able to define the purpose of the spreadsheet in one sentence or less Thissounds rather obvious and at little basic but try it If you can’t tell someone what thepurpose of a spreadsheet is in one sentence or less, then I would question what you aredoing with it In particular watch out for trying to do too much with a spreadsheet - onespreadsheet should not and will not solve everything

2 - Consider what inputs you want and what inputs you have.

As a rule of thumb it’s better to have more data than you need You can exclude data quiteeasily but it’s hard to get data, particularly accurate data, added in at a later stage

There might be a gap between what inputs you have and what inputs you need in order toachieve your required outputs Be realistic here Can you access that extra data you require

or do you need to adjust the purpose of the spreadsheet

Finally, always state what your data source is, ideally with a date stamp of when the datawas captured I’ll show you a couple of ways you can document this later

3 - Consider what you want the spreadsheet to process.

What do you need to do with those inputs? Do you need to collect them in order to get abigger picture? Do you need to perform calculations on them? Do you need to be able tomanipulate the data in order to present it as a visual summary? Or are you collecting it inorder to pass it onto someone else who will be working with it? This will affect how youwork with the spreadsheet and whether there are certain requirements you need to meet

4 - Consider the output - what and for whom

First, consider for whom the output is for; staff, peers, management or board level? Thiswill dictate the type of output; visual summary, data table, pivot table or dashboard forexample We don’t go into detail in this book on the output format, but it’s something tokeep in mind

5 - Document assumptions.

Any assumptions that you have made about the data or any calculations that you perform

on the data must be documented

There is nothing wrong with adding notes or instructions within your spreadsheet Don’tunderestimate the value of this at a later stage for yourself, as well as someone else whomight be taking it over in the future

6 – File naming

Please take the time to consider how to name your spreadsheet; be as descriptive as youcan

Too many times I’ve quickly named a spreadsheet and forgotten what I called it and notbeen able to find it afterwards

Secondly I use this format because when sorting in Windows Explorer by filename I caneasily see the latest files

It doesn’t matter too much what the naming convention is, just ensure there is adescriptive naming convention and that you use version control I can’t stress enough howmuch you may thank your lucky stars you have version controlled a spreadsheet ratherthan saved over it I have had to revert or refer back to previous versions many a time

To keep your folder structure tidy you can set up a folder called ‘old’ to keep the oldversions

Structure

The second part of setting up your spreadsheet is to ensure that you have strong structuralfoundations in place

All versions of Excel have many many more rows than you need, and many more rowsthan columns What this means is that you need to have your defined list as columnheaders and your growing number of items, in this case ‘sales’, in the rows

Then decide what your column headers should be and what they should be called, try to be

as descriptive as you can I’ve seen many an incorrect data analysis carried out because ofvague column headers and people misinterpret what that data is telling them For example,don’t just put ‘date’, put ‘date collected’, ‘date sold’, ‘date ordered’ - something whichprovides the user with a bit more information

The next step is to decide what order the columns should be Again there is no hard andfast rule for this The layout should be logical – both for reading and entering data, ideallyworking from left to right and top to bottom, just as you would read a book

As a rule of thumb for your first column you want something that will provide a uniquereference It’s good practice to have this unique identifier at the beginning of your databecause it will allow for easier data analysis later down the line

In the list above we have something which looks like an order number This will be theunique reference so I’ll start with that

I’ve also resized the columns so I can see the column headers in full Do this by movingyour mouse over the line between columns The cursor will change to look like this:

Then you can either click and drag the column to the required size or double-click themouse and the column will automatically resize in order to show the longest piece of text

in that column

You can manually move this back to the end of the ‘r’

I’ve actually done the columns manually in this case I like a bit of space between theheaders so the data doesn’t run into each other

Now you can enter your data

3 - Common data

You might have some data which is the same throughout the rows, its best practice not tohave repeated data It simply doesn’t add value but does increase the amount of data youhave to work with and the file size of the workbook

Here we have a combination of both; we’ve got some data which applies to the wholeworksheet and some which has data that applies to each row

Always look to reduce the number of columns without reducing the data Move the

‘Location’ and ‘Store ID’ common data to the top of the worksheet

TIP - If you have to use multiple worksheets to capture similar data, where possible use the same columns for the same things across worksheets This will make swapping between worksheets more familiar and calculations easier at a later stage.

4 - Comments

‘comments’ to add descriptions where relevant You might want to expand on what data isrequired or expected in a column

3 Enter your comment

You can choose to show or hide comments in one go using an option on the ‘Review’ribbon Otherwise comments will only appear when you hover over the cell

Not every spreadsheet will require instructions, but I’ve seen too many spreadsheetswithout instructions which could really do with a few lines

Instructions could range from a separate worksheet with step-by-step detailed instructionsthrough to a couple of lines at the top or bottom of data This will help any user to quicklygrasp what the spreadsheet is for and how to use it

Below I’ve simply added a line indicating what the user needs to do

Now we have a solid structure in place The spreadsheet has been set up; it now needs abit of formatting which we’ll cover a bit later

Future-proof

You need to ensure that you can easily amend or add to the data This might be by leavingappropriate spaces or grouping data together

Where possible, avoid using advanced features where simple features are usually morethan adequate In my series of books, I do my utmost to keep it simple If I mentionadvanced functionality it will either because it’s worth learning, or to let you know it’sthere but why I wouldn’t use it

do this is to keep it simple and have only one piece of data per cell

Another aspect of future-proofing your spreadsheet will be with the way you structureyour calculations; this is outside the scope of this book – but I start to cover this in mynext book

Getting data into Excel

Inputs should only be entered once and should be entered in a logical location within theworkbook

As just mentioned, never try to put data into one cell which should be split into two cells.You aren’t saving space; you are just potentially causing issues down the line with anydata analysis For example, if you have to enter full names into a spreadsheet, put the firstname and last name in two cells, not one It’s easier to join them together than split themapart at a later stage, (easier but not impossible)

When typing data into a cell get into the habit of pressing ‘Enter’ rather than just moving

to the next cell In most cases this isn’t a problem However if you’re typing a formula youcould risk amending that formula by moving to another cell without properly exiting thecell

Press ‘Escape’ on the keyboard to cancel editing a cell or entering data into it

If you’ve started to accidentally overtype the contents of a cell, simply press ‘Escape’ tocome out of the cell and leave the original contents

Autofill

Knowing about Excel’s autofill functionality you can really speed up data entry

Say you had a list of numbers to generate You can enter the first 3 numbers

The cursor will change to look like this:

Click and drag the mouse down to the number that you need In this case we want a list of10

Release the mouse and Excel will autofill the numbers

You can also do this with dates Enter the first date in a cell – can you then use autofill tocopy down and create a list of dates

to do a list of dates

If you want to list the months of the year, enter Jan and Feb, so Excel understands that youwant the list to be the first of every month

Then drag the bottom right-hand corner down to December

hand corner of a cell and drag down the data

Watch out how you autofill though Above I’ve shown you how to grab the bottom right-However another popular method of copying data below other data is a shortcut known asCtrl+D I use this shortcut a lot to copy data, but this doesn’t autofill data - there is a bigdifference between the two:

Types of copy and paste

click functionality, which involves several clicks in order to do a copy and paste

Copy and paste is a huge time-saver, however I still see too many people using the right-Here are another two handy shortcuts Use ‘Ctrl+C’ to copy and ‘Ctrl+V’ to paste theresults – give it a try and see how quickly you can copy and paste things within Excel.There are a few types of copy and paste that you need to know about

Ctrl+V is a normal paste

If you are working on a spreadsheet which has calculations in this might be a little morecomplicated

Column E in the below is a calculation field We cover creating calculations in my secondbook ‘Excel Basic Formulae’, but for now you just need to know that the calculation ismultiplying the price by the quantity to give the total price

It copies the calculation formula not the calculation result.

If you want to only copy the calculation result you need to ‘copy and paste values’

Start by copying the cells normally; select the cells and press ‘Ctrl+C’

Select the cell to paste to and right-click

Or you can select ‘Paste Special’ and select ‘Values’

TIP – if you are copying data from the internet, you often end up copying hyperlinks If you don’t want hyperlinks in your spreadsheet ensure you copy and paste values.

The key is to have something consistent which separates each bit of data For exampledoes your data have what’s known as a ‘separator’ or ‘delimiter’ between each piece ofdata?

Fortunately we have a comma in-between each piece of data in the above which will makethe process straightforward

1 - Select the data you need to split up and click ‘Text to Columns’

Step 1: Select ‘Delimited’ we have a comma to separate each field

Step 2: Tick ‘Comma’, this comma is a delimiter and will trigger Excel to put data aftereach comma into a new column You can see that Excel gives you a data preview based onthe comma splits in the ‘Data preview’ section This looks good to me so far

Step 3: Here you can specify the type data per column I’m happy to leave the columns as

‘General’ format You can change the format later anyway

Click ‘Finish’.

Formatting your spreadsheet

Many people spend way too much time formatting their spreadsheet – often leading toover-formatting, inconsistent formatting or worse - distasteful formatting The moreformatting you have, the larger the workbook will be, Excel has to store the formatinformation somehow and it manifests itself as a larger workbook

Remember, beauty is in the eye of the beholder, keep it simple; black, white, grey andperhaps a couple of accent colours is usually more than sufficient

Consistency

Always keep your font consistent and stick with the basic, clear, readable fonts; Arial orCalibri for example You could perhaps put the title or headers in different font, but restrictyourself to two fonts Changing fonts inconsistently throughout makes the spreadsheetlook messy

Let’s take the ‘Freddy Toys’ example and work through how to format it

It has a single font ‘Calibri’ and a single font size ‘11’

It doesn’t look great, but it does look consistent and is a good starting point for formatting.Let’s highlight the title I tend to make this bigger – either font size 12 or 14 and bold it

I have some labels and headers Ideally put these in bold This is particularly useful forcolumn headers as it will help Excel recognise them as headings when using certainfunctions such as ‘sort’.

Use a cell colour and borders to highlight your column headers Try not to use reallybright colours, they detract from the data.

At this point try to keep all colour and border lines to a minimum at this stage You don’twant to overwhelm the viewer For example the below is difficult to get your head around.I’m not exaggerating, I’ve seen spreadsheets similar to this!

I also sometimes use different coloured headers for different column sections It breaks upthe columns and again, helps to make the spreadsheet more readable This table doesn’t

The text data is in the grey section and the numbers and prices are in the blue section.Always try to go for the lighter pale colours; they are much easier on the eye

If appropriate use a key in order to tell your viewers what the formatting is telling them.This won’t always be necessary and I don’t often use a key – but if you have statusupdates in red, yellow and green for example – tell the viewer what those colours mean.Never assume!

Format Painter

A massive formatting time-saver is ‘Format Painter’ I love this tool! It allows you to copythe format from one cell and apply it to another cell or range of cells

1 - Select a cell containing the formatting that you want Click once one the format painterbutton – a series of flashing lines will appear around the selected cell and the mousepointer will also have a format painter brush attached to it

The cursor will look like this:

That’s great but it gets even more useful

Do the same but double-click on the format painter button

This will hold the format painter brush, so you can click on as many different non-adjacentcells as you want to update the formatting When you’re done, press ‘Escape’ in order todrop the format painter brush

This double-click trick has saved me hours of repetitive clicking!

Highlights

Is some of your data more significant than the rest of it? Use bold or italic font on areasyou want to stand out

Alternatively you could use borders to give the cells extra attention, but don’t try to useeverything all at once - pick your highlight tool

To ensure this is consistent we can select the cells and click the below button within

‘Home’ and under the ‘Number’ group, to increase or decrease the number of decimalplaces

Select the cells you want to amend In this case cells D3:D6

The press the ‘increase decimal place’ button twice to get two decimal places in each cell

That’s a good start

Currency format

You can actually go one better here by using the currency format

The currency format will default to the currency Excel has been set up in; in my case Ihave pounds or GBP as my default It will also default to two decimal places and if thenumber is large enough it will also drop a comma in.

So when you enter 15/1/13 – Excel will recognise the date and format it as 15/01/2013You can tweak this format if you want I find the easiest way to do this is to right-click onthe cell and select ‘format cells’.

As you can see Excel also gives you a few other options you can use Again, don’t try toget too clever, but it’s good to know that you can be pretty flexible when it comes to dates

TIP – if you have dates for headings always use real dates and format them as dates This will make it easier at a later stage if you need to analyse your data, you will be able to use the headings as part of your calculations If you don’t want the headings to have a single date showing then format mmm-yy to keep the heading tidy.

Percentage format

A quick note on percentages - when you type in 10 and then click on the % button, it getsconverted to 1000%

You haven’t done anything wrong here, but Excel converts the number into theappropriate percentage

Mathematically 10% is actually 0.1 in numerical terms Therefore in order to get 10%, thevalue needs to be is 0.1

Formatting phone numbers

This can be a tricky one What we have to do is trick Excel (yes it’s possible) into thinkingthat the telephone number is actually text

You do this in order to ensure you don’t lose the zero at the beginning of the telephonenumber

You can either set the cell format as text under the ‘Home’ ribbon and ‘Number’ section oryou can add an apostrophe in front of the number in order to tell Excel that this will be atext formatted cell and therefore to keep the zero

General Format: