Excel Tips & Tricks Christopher Johnson
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Sparklines Excel is great for tables and graphs, but why not combine the two and save time? Sparklines appeared
in Excel 2010. By clicking the Insert tab and choosing Line, Column, or Win/Loss in the Sparklines
secition, and then choosing the range, you can add a simple graph inside a cell, next to your data. This is
a great way to show trends inside the table itself.
Sort by Color Why only sort on values? Ever color code your data? If so, you can actually sort on your color coding.
Hightlight your table, click sort, choose the column that you want to sort by, and rather than leave the
Sort On field as the default (Values), change it to Cell Color. You can even select the sort order. Click
OK, and your data is sorted by color.
Cell Styles Do you often color code your worksheets? Why not use a standard so that they all look the same, look
professional, and make sense to others? On the home tab, there is a Cell Styles button. A few styles
that I find very useful are Heading, Calculation, Input, and Explanatory. They allow me to format
headings, differentiate between constant and formula cells, and format explanations quickly and easily.
DATE_ID GOOG PEP AAPL
4-Sep-15 600 91 109
3-Sep-15 617 92 112
2-Sep-15 606 91 110
1-Sep-15 602 91 110
31-Aug-15 628 93 112
Name Grade
Mark A
Steven B
Ben C
Suzy A
Jessica B
Find Links Do you ever open a worksheet and find broken links, but have difficulty finding them. There is a very
easy trick. Links all contain the [ character. Search the entire workbook for the left brace, and it will
give you every link to an external file.
Shortcut Keys Have you ever watched someone’s hands fly across a keyboard in Excel, working faster than you could
reach for a mouse. I have. There are many useful shortcut keys that can make you more efficient.
Autofill & Flashfill Most of you have probably seen Autofill by now. If you have data in a cell, click on the click, hover of the
bottom right-hand corner until the cursor is a +, and drag down, Excel will attempt to find a pattern to
complete as it fills in your data. This works very well with dates, numbers, or any obvious patterns in a
single column. Starting with Excel 2013, Excel offers Flashfill, which can find and complete patterns in
formats and across multiple columns.
DATE_ID GOOG PEP AAPL
4-Sep-15 600 91 109
3-Sep-15 617 92 112
2-Sep-15 606 91 110
1-Sep-15 602 91 110
31-Aug-15 628 93 112
Average 610.6 91.6 110.6
The data above was downloaded from Google Stocks.
Keys Function
Ctrl+Scroll Zoom
Ctrl+z Undo
Ctrl+x Cut
Ctrl+c Copy
Ctrl+v Paste
Ctrl+y Redo
Ctrl+arrow Move Across Table
Ctrl+Shift+arrow Highlight Table
Ctrl++ Insert
Alt+= AutoSum
esc Stop Process
F2 Enter Cell at End
F4 Add $ to Cell References
Alt+F11 Open Worksheet Code
Consider the example below. By only filling in 1/1/2015, Autofill was able to complete the remaining
dates. Next, we have the unformatted names in the next columns. By completing one example with
formatting, Excel is able to find the pattern and complete the rest.
If you click and hover to get the + using the right mouse button and then drag, Excel gives you options of
how to complete the data.
Autofill FlashFill
1/1/2015 johnson chris Chris Johnson
1/2/2015 smith john John Smith
1/3/2015 baker jennifer Jennifer Baker
1/4/2015 tucker michael Michael Tucker
1/5/2015 wayne leigh Leigh Wayne
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