01/01/22, 22:59 15 Excel Advanced Tips and Tricks to Save Time and Get Known by Peers as an Excel Master

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15 Excel Advanced Tips and Tricks to Sa

Get Known by Peers as an Excel M

Have you been looking for Excel Advanced Tips and Tricks to make you faster and sav

Look no further: in this article you will see 15 tips and tricks in Excel to save time and get
Excel ninja. So, why wait? Let’s get started!

1. Keyboard Shortcuts
You will save tons of time and make moves like a ninja once you master the keyboard sh
favorites:

1. |Ctrl + A|: will select all of the data

2. |Ctrl + C|: will copy the selected data (or object)

3. |Ctrl + V|: will paste the copied data (or object)

4. |Ctrl + End|: will take you to the last cell of your data

5. |Ctrl + Home|: will take you to the first cell of your data

6. |Ctrl + Up Arrow|: will take you to the first cell of your active column

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7. |Ctrl + Down Arrow|: will take you to the last cell of your active column

8. |Shift + Space|: will select row(s) of your active cell(s)

9. |Ctrl + Space|: will select column(s) of your active cell(s)

10. |Shift + Space|: will select row(s) of your active cell(s)v

11. |Ctrl + minus sign|: will give you Delete options

For a complete list of keyboard shortcuts, visit: http://bit.ly/1QljQSp

2 Copy Formula Down

To quickly copy a formula down:

1. Hover to the bottom-right corner of the cell with the formula (you will notice that the cursor has tur

2. Double click the plus sign

3 Copying Values or Formulas

When tip #2 doesn’t work because there’s a blank cell between your starting cell and the
don¢t want to drag a formula down to 1000 rows, try this:

1. Go to the first cell that you would like to copy or fill in other cells

2. In the name box, type in the address of the last cell of the range, where you want to fill data or fo

3. Press F2 to edit the formula in your first cell

4. Then hit |Ctr + Enter|

You can see the name box highlighted in the red box. You will find this box right next to th

4 Total a Column or a Row

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To quickly total a column or a row, in the last cell, hit |Alt + =| (equal to sign).

5 Delete Duplicate Rows

To delete rows with duplicated data, follow these steps:

1. Select the range of the data that you want de-duplicated (usually, |Ctrl + A| works)

2. Click on the Data menu option from the menu ribbon

3. Click on the Remove Duplicates button

4. Choose whether your range has a header row

5. Hit OK

6 Add Leading Zeros

You often find the need to add leading zeros to a number and most likely the result value
you may want to show the number 7893 as 0000007893, making the number a text value
characters. If your number is in A1 and you want to convert that to text with leading zeros
characters, enter this formula in B1:

=TEXT(A1,REPT("0",10))

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7 Repeat Header for Printing

While printing a multi-page sheet, it is useful to repeat the header row(s) on every page.

1. Click on Page Layout menu option on the riboon

2. Click on Print Titles button

3. Select the row(s) you want to repeat at the top in Rows to Repeat at Top box

8 Create Named Ranges

For sheets with large number of rows, it is useful to give names to ranges so that you can
formulas without clicking and selecting long ranges. To quickly give names to your range

1. Click on the Formulas menu option on the ribbon

2. Click on the Create from Selection button

3. Select the ranges to give names from usually Top Row works well as this row is the header row

9 Copy Values
To speed up copying only values and not the formulas, use this keyboard shortcut seque

1. |Ctrl + A| to select the whole range of data (or select your range with the help of the mouse)

2. |Ctrl + C| to copy the data

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3. in your destination, press |Alt + E|, then |S|, then |V|, and then |Enter|

The whole sequence is:

Ctrl + A, Ctrl + C, Alt + E, S, V, Enter

After you practice this a couple of times, when you do this in front of your peers, without a
your new ninja abilities.

10 Import a Table from the Web

Often you need to import data from the internet and you wish for a better way of doing so
say you want to import the list of all time leaders of home run hitters in baseball from bas
steps to enjoy seeing this data in an Excel file:

1. Click on Data menu option from the ribbon

2. Click on From Web

3. In the browser window, enter the URL: http://www.baseball-almanac.com/hitting/hihr1.shtml

4. Hit the Go button on the browser window

5. Scroll down to the table of home runs

6. Click on Click to select this table check box

7. Click on Import

8. Click on OK

Only a ninja can import raw tables from the web to the Excel files!

11 Delete Current Row(s)

To quickly delete current row(s), follow these two steps

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1. Select the row(s) by |Shift + Space|

2. Delete the selected row(s) by |Ctrl + - (minus sign)|

12 Delete Current Column(s)

To quickly delete current column(s), follow these two steps

1. Select the column(s) by |Ctrl + Space|

2. Delete the selected column(s) by |Ctrl + - (minus sign)|

13 Quick Aggregation
Quick Tool provide aggregate statistics, such as Average, Count, Numerical Count, Ma
from a selected range without entering any formula. To show these statistics in the bottom
toolbar and choose the desired statistic.

14 Finding a Related Value

Often you have to translate or cross-walk a value, say a state code, to it a related value,
state name. You can write multiple, nested |IF|, but a ninja way is to use a |VLOOKUP| f
formula is: =VLOOKUP(lookup_value,table_array,col_index_num,range_lookup)

In the above example, our lookup value is the state code and table array is a table with the state

The column index is the column that we want to return after matching a code

The range lookup is an argument to search for exact matches (1 or TRUE) or approximate match

Let’s say, your customer IDs in Column A, their mailing state code in Column B, and in C
state spelled out. To do so, follow these steps:

1. Create a table of codes and their fully-spelled values in Column E and F

2. In |C2|, enter this formula:  =VLOOKUP(B2,E3:F6,2,0)

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3. Copy the formula down

Here’s how it looks:

15 Converting Numbers to Ranges

Did you ever find yourself with the need to convert a number column to discrete ranges fo
graphs? Did you wish there was a better way? Well, there is: the |VLOOKUP| formula. Yo
of VLOOKUP formula is:=VLOOKUP(lookup_value,table_array,col_index_num,rang
numbers to ranges, you use the |range_lookup| argument with a value of |TRUE|, whic
approximate match to the lookup value. We can use this to our advantage. Let’s say, you
population, revenue, sales, # of units, etc, in Column A. You want to convert these measu
so, follow these steps:

1. Create a table of measures and their discrete ranges in Column F and G

2. In |C2|, enter this formula: =VLOOKUP(A2,F3:G8,2,1)

3. Copy the formula down

Here’s how it looks:

16 Text to Columns
Did you have a lots of data in a text document and you wish you could easily copy that to
Word document with some bullet points, like this:

Vendor A: 5,000

Vendor X: 9,900

Vendor D: 10,000

Vendor Z: 3,500

To copy and keep the desired formatting for easier manipulation, follow these steps:

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1. Copy the data from your Word document

2. Paste the data in a blank Excel spreadsheet (say starting from cell |A1|)

3. Select column A

4. Click on the Data menu on the ribbon

5. Click on Text to Columns button

6. In the Convert Text to Columns Wizard — Step 1, select “Delimited”

7. In Step 2, check the “Other” box and enter |:| (colon) as the delimiter.

8. Hit Next/Finish and complete the wizard

Here’s how it looks:

The text will be separated by your delimiter and data will be in separate columns

17 Add Double Quotes (or other chara

Excel Formulas
Suppose you have some text in a few columns. You want to join or concatenate these co
needs to be surrounded by double quotes. What to do in such as case?

So, let's say column A has first names, column B middle initials, and column C last name
be surrounded by double quotes. You could escape the quotes by surrounding them with
will look like this:

=A2&""""&B2&""""&C2

It gets ugly soon. If you want to add spaces or any other characters, the formula become
better option is using the CHAR formula. The CHAR formula shows a character for a cod
ASCII tables to find out the character you want to concatenate. The ASCII number of 34
(32 is a space). 

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So, our new formula will look like this:

=A2&CHAR(34)&B2&CHAR(34)&C2

This doesn't have spaces though, so we will add a space using CHAR(32):

=A2&CHAR(32)&CHAR(34)&B2&CHAR(34)&CHAR(32)&C2

It will look like this:

18 Count Unique Values From a Range

Often, you need to see a count of unique values in a range. While you can use other met
rows, a quick formula is sometimes all you need.

Let's say you have some text values in A1:A10 range. In this example, we have city nam
some cities for this example.

In another empty cell, in this case, in C1, we type this formula:

=SUM(1/COUNTIF(A1:A10,A1:A10))

But instead of hitting the regular enter key, we use Command + Shift + Enter on a Mac or
Windows. By doing so, we create an array formula. You should see the number 7 as the

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19 Count Numbers That Fall in a Rang

Suppose you have some numbers or values in a range, and you want to count how many
range. How would you find that count?

There are two ways of doing so:

A fixed method

Let's say our data is in the range A1 to A15. We want to count how many rows have valu
In an empty cell, as shown in the image below, we enter this formula:

=COUNTIFS(A1:A15,">=50",A1:A15,"<=80")

But now if you want to count something different, you will have to edit the formula. A bett
formula.

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A dynamic method

Let's say we store our from and to values in cells D2 and D3. Now, we can enter this form
between this range:

COUNTIFS(A1:A15,">="&D2,A1:A15,"<="&D3)

Now, you can easily change the values in those cells and our count will get updated. For
range to 10 and 40:

20 Use Excel to Help Write SQL

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I use Excel all the time to help me get things done quickly. It includes creating data and c
complicated SQL logic. Watch this short GIF to see how to create a CASE WHEN statem

21 Divide Values by a Number

If you want to divide many cells by a constant number, type in that constant in a cell. Cop
of cells you want to divide, right-click and hit Paste Special, and select Divide. As you ca
options, you can multiply, add, or subtract. But I find divide and multiply option helpful to
percentages and vice versa.

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22 Make Data Sideways or Vertical

In the Paste Special options, you will notice a Transpose option. This option will make yo
See the GIF below:

Take your Excel game to the next level with these books

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