| Take a few shortcuts - Excel | | Print | |
Who doesn't need to save a little time here and there? Keyboard shortcuts can help you do just that. Here's a list of shortcuts for Excel that will make life a little easier: [Ctrl][Shift]A: Use this combination after typing a function name, and it will automatically enter the parentheses and the argument names for the function you typed. [Alt][F8]: Displays the Macro dialog box.
[Alt][F11]: Opens the VBA Editor or switches to it if it's already open.
[Ctrl]1: Displays the Format Cells dialog box.
[Ctrl][Shift][~]: Applies the General format.
[Ctrl][Shift][$]: Formats the current cells as Currency.
[Ctrl][Shift][#]: Applies the Date format.
[Shift][F10]: Displays the shortcut menu that applies to the selection.
[F6]: Moves to the next pane in a split worksheet.
[Shift][F6]: Moves to the previous pane.
[Ctrl][F6]: Moves to the next workbook window.
[Ctrl][Shift][F6]: Moves back to the last workbook window.
[F3]: Opens a dialog box to paste a Named Range into a formula.
[Ctrl][F3]: Opens the Define Name dialog box.
[Ctrl][Shift][F3]: Automatically creates Named Ranges from the headers for the selected table of data with row or column headers.
[Shift][F3]: Inserts an equal sign (=) and opens the Paste Function dialog box to help you pick a formula.
[Alt][=]: Inserts the AutoSum function.
[Ctrl][;]: Inserts the current date.
Analyzing external data in Excel
Your users might not know that they can use Excel to analyze data from the various databases in your organization. They can use the powerful analytical tools of Excel on data they previously only viewed or edited within the database user interface. Using these features, they can pull data from your customer database, sales tracking database, product catalog, and HR systems into various sheets in a workbook and perform complex pivot table analysis not possible using the separate applications.
This ability is provided by the use of Microsoft Query, an Office application that lives "behind" Excel. You can access Microsoft Query by clicking Data | Get External Data. The Query interface is similar to the Design view of a query in Access. Point Query at a database, and it will allow you to build complex relational queries to pull the necessary data into your worksheet. Now you can build your pivot tables and perform your analysis.
Take advantage of the Personal Macro Workbook
The Personal Macro Workbook is the Excel cousin to the Normal.dot file in Word. It's a file that opens with Excel in the background and makes your saved macros available for any open workbook. This workbook is one of the options available when recording new macros in Excel.
We recommend saving all macros that will be used across multiple workbooks into the Personal Macro Workbook. This will keep things simpler for your users. If they try to save a macro into each workbook where it will be used, they'll have a tough job of updating if the macro requires a change. If it's saved in the Personal Macro Workbook, it will need to be changed only once. The change will be available across all workbooks. When writing macros in the VBA Editor, macros should be saved in Personal.xls. Remember to retain this workbook when doing backups. It can be a valuable file once you begin creating macros that help in your work.
Clear out all comments
As handy as comments can be in annotating the information in a worksheet, your users may sometimes want to delete them once they've served their purpose. The fastest way to handle this task is to click Edit | Go To | Special and then select the Comments option and click OK. Users can then choose Clear from the Edit menu and select Comments. Excel will delete all the comments and their text from the current worksheet.
| Users' Comments (0) |
|
No comment posted
