I bet you never thought the word “cool” and “Excel” would ever appear in the same sentence. Well, we’re about to prove to you why these Excel tips can make your life a whole lot cooler!
Whether you believe us or not, you’ll agree that Excel can make your day to day tasks and projects super easy once you know these three Excel features.
Are you taking full advantage of everything Excel has to offer? Here are three cool Excel features you will wish you would have known about sooner.
- Pivot Table
If your boss is looking for some helpful information based on your data in a pinch or you’re just curious, pivot tables can be a lot of fun. Playing around with pivot tables can help you find out where the majority of your demographic is located, age ranges, or average sales per day.
You may discover a trend in your data that you didn’t know was there! Maybe you find that one product is more popular than another or a particular email was more successful. Pivot tables may seem overwhelming at first but they can be insightful once you get the hang of it.
To create a pivot table, you will need to click Insert and then Pivot Table. Next, you will highlight all the columns and rows you want to include. You can hit the corner arrow to instantly highlight the entire table.
Your Pivot Table will appear in a separate table where you can select, drag, and drop the different fields you want to compare. Graduate to even more Excel action, learn more here.
- Conditional Formatting
When you have a huge spreadsheet full of data, it can be difficult to mine through all of that content. Luckily Excel will do it for you with Conditional Formatting. This can be used in a number of ways.
For example, you can find any duplicate content such as phone numbers or last names by highlighting a column of data. Then click on Conditional Formatting and select duplicate values. This option also has a dropdown that will highlight unique values as well.
Another great feature used often with Conditional Formatting as the “Text that Contains” feature. This allows you to highlight cells that contain certain words or you can replace them with alternative words or symbols.
Once you highlight the content you’re looking for, you can then use it to sort and search for them.
- Absolute References
Did you know you don’t have to copy-paste each cell in order to fill in your spreadsheet? An easy trick to building your spreadsheet is referencing other cells. You can also do this when using complex formulas where you want to extend the formulas in one row to the rows beneath it.
All you need to do is add a dollar sign in front to let Excel know you want to fix the information in the cell. A dollar sign in front of the letter fixes the column, and the dollar sign in front of the number will fix the rows.
Excel Features Just Got Cooler
Excel might seem complicated at first, but before you know it, you’ll be using these three Excel features to improve your work and save time!
If you enjoyed these tips, then you’ll love our other articles. Check them out on our site!
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