ESSENTIAL

EXCEL TIPS

Tips All New

Users Must Know

CONQUER THE FEAR OF EXCEL

ESSENTIAL EXCEL TIPS

CONQUER THE FEAR OF EXCEL

Getting Started
in Excel
Table of Contents
Intro
Entry and Editing Shortcuts
Navigation and Selections Shortcuts
The Must-Know Keyboard Shortcuts
15 Secrets to Efficiency Only the Pros Know

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Lets start with a story.

iles Lannis spent the first fifteen years of his career working in sales.
He loved the art of it: connecting with people, learning who they were
and what makes them tick. Closing the sale was made him feel alive.

Over the years, his success as a salesperson helped him move up in his company.
Then, about ten years into his career, he moved to a new company with a higher
commission rate. His ability to connect with people transferred as well and he soon
became the top salesperson at his new company.
He achieved such a high rate of sales success that he soon became a sales
manager with three people reporting to him. Within three years he became the best
sales manager in the company. Then, the company COO told him that he would
replace the Sales Director after she retired. The new job came with a much higher
salary, more benefits, a new parking spaceand sales reporting dutiesusing their
Excel Spreadsheets.
Miles was a great salesperson, excellent manager and a good company man.
But he never used Excel professionally before. It just was not a part of his duties.
Now, after fifteen years of working hard, doing well and moving up, he faced
a new challenge.
And the learning curve wasnt a small one. He struggled to perform simple tasks in
updating sales figures, reconciling the actual sales numbers with projections and
creating models for future projections. He often felt embarrassed and had to ask
the new hire, a twenty-two year old, in IT for help. Often, he would find himself
spending hours trying to Google his problem or search through the
myriad of YouTube videos that offered helpbut never seemed to address
his specific problem.

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One time...he was trying to update the commission calculator with this
quarters sales and accidentally deleted all of the stored formulas in the table.
His boss gave him an earful for that.
Slowly but surely, Miles picked up what he needed to with Excel. He got help
from colleagues, attended a few webinars and remembered whatever tips he
came across. But he faced issues here and there.
It got to the point that just opening the Excel spreadsheet became a moment
of dread. Miles often said to himself, what I would have given to have all the
things in Excel I need to know taught to me at the very beginning.

Miless story is not unique. Excel is a versatile and vitally

important tool in business but professionals young and old,
established and just starting out, struggle with it. It was with
this struggle in mind that this free guide, Excel Essentials for
New Users was created.

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Entry and Editing Shortcuts

In this section, you will discover how to enter data, move through
the spreadsheet and discover the most used formulas in Excel.
The Excel spreadsheet grid is where data gets stored and displayed.
You can double-click on the cell to be
able to enter and edit data.
Pro Tip: You can also enter
Or, you can use the Formula Bar at the data by just clicking on
top of the spreadsheet.
the cell BUT if you want to

So, lets get started with entering

data.

EDIT data, you will need

to double click or click
into the formula bar. A
single click on the cell will
replace any existing data
with the new keystrokes
or pasted information.

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A.) Basic Entry and Editing Shortcuts

As you enter data in Excel, the data appears in the cell and in the
formula bar at the top of the worksheet.

Type and press Tab to move to the right, cell to cell,

across columns
Shift+Tab to move to the left.
Type and enter to move down, cell to cell, across rows.
Shift+Enter to move up.
Press Tab or Enter to complete any cells entry or editing.
Press Ctrl+Enter to complete any cells entry or editing and
stay in the same cell.
Cells are referred to by their cell name, such as A1, column name first
followed by row number.
Text is left justified.
Numbers are right justified
Numeric labels, such as year labels, need to be formatted as text
so they are not accidentally calculated into a formula

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B.) Basic Editing

Edit in the cell or in the formula bar at the top of the worksheet.
F2 positions the cursor in the cell to edit. Home key moves the cursor
to the front of the cell (left).
Name Box / Cancel / Enter / Insert Formula

To replace cell contents, click on the cell and type over the top of the
existing data.
Until you press Enter or Tab, you can click the Cancel button to
revert to the previous contents.
Undo and Redo buttons may be used as a secondary recovery
technique.

To clear contents of a cell or a range of cells, select the cell or range,

click Home tab > Edit group > Clear. Clear All clears both contents
and formatting from a cell.
The Delete key clears only content of a cell but leaves formatting.
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Navigation and Selection Shortcuts

Once you are familiar with how to enter and edit data, you will want to be
able to move around the spreadsheet with ease and select the information
you need.

A.) Navigation
Special keys: Home / End, Page Up / Page Down
Ctrl+Home / Ctrl+End
Ctrl+Arrow keys
Name Box / Cancel / Enter / Insert Formula
Go To: Ctrl+G, F5, Name Box (Cell, Defined Name)

B.) Selection Shortcut Techniques

Data Selected

Selection Methods

Range of data

Shift+click

Immediate range

Ctrl+A with cursor in the range

Nonadjacent Data

Ctrl+click and drag

Entire Column / Row

Data only in Column/Row

Click on column / row heading.

Shift+Ctrl+arrow

Entire Document

Ctrl+A
Click in upper left corner.

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C.) Mouse Indicator Shortcuts

White plus Center of the cell Select/highlight
Black plus Lower right corner of the cell Autofill

Double-click on down fill handle for instant Fill Down

Four-Pointed Navigator Arrow Border of the cell Move

Ctrl+Drag to move a copy

Black Arrow Down or Right In Column or Row Heading Select
Column or Row
Double arrow On Column or Row Heading Line Resize Column or
Row.
Double-click on any header line for AutoFit

Once you get used to using the Spreadsheet grid, you will want to increase
your efficiency. To that end, we provide some the tips and techniques to save
you time while you work.

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The Must Know Keyboard Shortcuts

Now that youre flying around in Excel, you might find going back to click on
different items to be a waste of time. Luckily, there are keyboard shortcuts to
performing many of the tasks you will need.

Keyboard Shortcut 1: Writing Multiple Lines in the Same Cell

You will notice that Excel default is to have all data on one line within the
cell. But, lets say you want to enter an address into a single cell. How do you
create multiple lines for the Name, Address and City, State, Zip lines?
While you are typing into the cell and you are ready to move to the
second line that that cell just press:

Alt+Enter

And the new line will start.

There is also a button in the ribbon that allows you to select a cell,
or multiple cells, and split the text into multiple lines
This is called Wrap Text and is located on the Alignment Tab
of the Home Ribbon:

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Keyboard Shortcut 2: Quickly Move Through Your Worksheets

Many workbooks contain multiple worksheets and moving through them
can by annoying and time consuming.
But there are keyboard shortcuts that will cut down the process!
To move one worksheet to the right press

Ctrl+Page Down
To move one worksheet to the left press

Ctrl+Page Up
If you have multiple excel files open you can press

Alt+Tab to move between them

Keyboard Shortcut 3: Group/Ungroup Data and Freeze Panes

Often we are stuck working with huge charts or the chart we are using
contains old data that is not relevant anymore but that cannot be deleted or
we need to show different lines depending on who we present the data to.
There are 2 functions in Excel that will help you group and ungroup data
so that you can hide it or show it as you please.
How do we group and ungroup data fast?
There are 2 buttons in the data tab in your ribbon that are placed
at the right end.

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Now all you need to do is select the rows you want to hide/show and click
group or ungroup. This is the end result:

Other times you may have a chart with so many rows that while you scroll
down you loose the first line with the column names. A quick fix will allow
you to save time e work faster while analyzing data.
In your ribbon, in the view tab, there is the Freeze Panes button. At this
point you want to select the raw that is underneath the one you want to
actually freeze and click Freeze Panes. There are also other 2 options with
different functions

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Keyboard Shortcut 4: Print a Specific Area:

Too often we are stuck working with gigantic Excel spreadsheets, and printing
a specific area is not always possible without some cut and paste and extra
work.
For this reason Excel, to save you time and headaches, has a specific button
that let you choose the area you need to print.
This button is located in your ribbon, in the page layout tab, and its called
Print Area:

Before you click on the button, select with the mouse the cells you need
to print and then click Print Area->Select Print Area and you will
be able to print only one chart, maybe only a few columns and so on.


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Keyboard Shortcut 5: Display All the Formulas in the Spreadsheet:

A single shortcuts lets you switch between Excels normal display, which
shows the results of the formulas in the spreadsheet, and a display mode
that shows all the actual formulas in your spreadsheet.
The keystroke is Ctrl + `
(The grave accent key is located on the top left of the keyboard next to the
1 key, in the US its the Tilde key); press it once, and Excel displays formulas
instead of results. Press it again, and the results appear again.

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15 Secrets to Efficiency
1. Using the Mouse Wheel for zooming in and out:
With Ctrl key held down, roll With Ctrl key held down, roll the mouse wheel
to zoom in or out at 15% increments from as low as 10% or as high as 400%

2. Quickly Jump for One Open Workbook to another Open Workbook:

Ctrl + Tab or Ctrl + F6

3. Get back to the first cell in your spreadsheet:

Ctrl+Home

4. Quickly jump the end of your spreadsheet:

Ctrl+End

5. T
 o select only visible cells within a
selected range:
1. Press F5
2. Click Special

Pro Tip: If you want to copy

a range of cells that contains
hidden rows or columns,
but you dont want to copy
any of the hidden data, use
this feature just after
selecting the range

3. Click Visible cells only, then OK or

press Alt + Semicolon

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6. To select non-contiguous ranges to highlight unconnected ranges:

1. Select a range
2. Release the left mouse button
3. With the Ctrl key held down, select another range
4. Repeat Steps 3 and 4 as needed

7. To make the same entry in many cells at once:

1. Select the cells,
2. Type the entry
3. Press Ctrl+Enter
If you type a formula or function, it will be entered, relatively, into all of
the selected cells; values and text will be entered, as typed, into all of the
selected cells.

8. To enter the current date in a cell:

Ctrl + Semicolon

9. To enter the current time in a cell:

Ctrl + Shift + Semicolon

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10. To save a keystroke when entering dates in this decade

Enter dates like 12/13/08 as 12/13/8 and dates like 5/9/09 as 5/9/8

Pro Tip: years entered as 00 through 29 are

automatically entered as 21st century dates;
years 30-99 are automatically entered as 20th
century dates. To avoid confusion, type 4-digit
years, as in 12/13/1929.

11. The best way to move a range of cells

Unless you need to move a range of cells across many rows or columns,
use this method for fast moving:
1. Select the cells you want to move
2. Point to any edge (but not the fill handle in the lower right corner)
of the selected cells; the cell pointer becomes an arrow
3. Click and drag to the destination

12. To select all cells in the current worksheet containing formulas:

1. Select a single cell
2. Press F5
3. Click Special

Tip: While these cells are highlighted,

apply a color background to remind
yourself which cells have formulas.

4. Click Formulas, then OK

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13. To increase all cells in a range by the same amount without a formula:
1. Enter the incremental amount into an empty cell
2. Click the Copy button
3. Select the cells to be changed
4. Right-click the selected cells and click Paste Special
5. Click the Add button and click OK

14. To start a numerical series of successive numbers with one cell entry
1. Enter the starting number in the first cell
2. With the Ctrl key held down, drag the fill handle in the direction
of the series

15. To quickly insert columns or rows

1. Right-click the column letter (just to the right of where you want the
column), or Click the row number (just below where you want
the new row)
2. Select Insert from the short-cut menu.

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Using Excel in the workplace can be a challenge,

but it can also open new doors to understanding your business.
In addition, great Excel users have an extra tool
to help advance their career.

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We hope you enjoyed this free guide,

and dont forget to check out other
free resources and great
training programs at:
LEARNEXCELNOW.COM