EXCEL TIPS AND TRICKS Sherry Marek Co-Founder of Datavision Technologies
AGENDA Excel Survey Why Excel is more than just Numbers Excel 2010/2013 Features General Timesaving features Pivot Table features PowerBI with Excel 2013 and beyond Database management tips Question and Answer session
QUICK SURVEY 2007, 2010 or 2013? Share data amongst team members? Use Excel for Reports, Database features (guest names, Travel Agency list, etcand need to sort)
HISTORY Lotus123 QuatroPro Google Sheets Excel over 20 years and going strong! (see Office 2016, PowerBI features)
BENEFITS OF ADDING VISUALS TO YOUR DATA? Pictures paint a thousand words Speed up decision process -less data to read Easy tool for many people to learn New features being added every few years Size of data sheets/pivot tables increasing
Sample Visual reports to create with Excel
Sample Visual reports to create with Excel
Sample Visual reports to create with Excel
Sample Visual reports to create with Excel
Sample Visual reports to create with Excel
Sample Visual reports to create with Excel Conditional Formatting
EXCEL 2010/2013 DIAGONAL LINES.
EXCEL 2010/2013 QUICKLY DELETE BLANKS Select the column you need, select Data Filter. Undo Select all and select (Blanks). All blank cells will show. Go back to Home and press Delete and all of them will be removed.
EXCEL 2010/2013 CONTROL INPUT FIELDS Control data entry using this tip. Go to Data Validation Setting. Go to the Input Message tab to provide further instructions and errors
EXCEL 2010/2013 FAST NAVIGATION Control plus any arrow. To go to the bottom line of data, Control + downward arrow.
EXCEL 2010/2013 ADD COLUMNS TOGETHER Use the & sign to combine different texts together in one field. The final result is LizaUSA25@ in F2
EXCEL 2010/2013 PASTE SPECIAL-TRANSPOSE Convert rows to columns. Or vice versa.
EXCEL 2013 ADD LOGO OR GRAPHICS Add a graphic, clip art to charts (or a Skier) - Insert menu, select Illustrations, Select Size and Properties
EXCEL 2013 HIDE IN PLAIN SIGHT Format cell with Custom category. Enter 3 semicolons in Type field
EXCEL 2013 HIDE A WHOLE SHEET Protect reference data or Last year data by hiding a sheet -select sheet name and then select hide.
EXCEL 2013 MACRO PERSONAL WORKBOOK Store your macros in Personal.XLSB Workbook.
EXCEL 2013 VALIDATE DATA DROPDOWNS Data Tab. Select Data Validation. Under Allow, select List. Then in Source field, type a list with commas between options. (hide list).
EXCEL 2010/2013 QUICKLY DELETE BLANKS Select the column you need, select Data Filter. Undo Select all and select (Blanks). All blank cells will show. Go back to Home and press Delete and all of them will be removed.
EXCEL 2013 RECOMMEND CHARTS
EXCEL 2013 PIVOTTABLES
EXCEL 2013 QUICKANALYSIS Sparklines Red/Yellow/Green
EXCEL 2013 FLASHFILL Automatically parse fields. Pulls first name out of full name string, etc.
Timesaving Features Format numbers Ctrl+Shift+S for currency Ctrl+Shift+! for 2 decimal Ctrl+Shift+% for percentage Ctrl+Shift+: for current time Ctrl+Shift+; for current date
Timesaving Features Cell reference VERY useful for referencing Dates like MTD or YTD information once in a formula and copy to all cells F4 to cycle through all combinations $A$1 $A1 A$1 A1
Timesaving Features Clear, Set Borders Ctrl + Shift + & This adds a thin border around your selected cells Ctrl + Shift + _ This removes all borders around your selected cells
Timesaving Features ALT ALT brings up the Key Tips. This shows you the keyboard shortcuts ALT+N+C ALT+H+F+P Column Chart Format Painter
Timesaving Features More shortcuts Ctrl+ Ctrl+0 Ctrl+9 F2 Today s date Hides current column Hides current row Start editing current cell (faster than double clicking)
Timesaving Features IF IF very powerful. Calculate one way if true or another way when false. Use for numbers, dates, text. 3 steps. In case you base your condition on the current date, you can use the TODAY() function in the logical_test argument of your IF formula. For example: =IF(C2<DATEVALUE("11/19/2014"), "Completed", "Coming soon")
Timesaving Features Database features VLOOKUP function Herd data scattered amongst different tabs and create a summary location.
CONCLUSION Visualization is not about putting lipstick on the pig. If the statistics are boring, then you ve got the wrong numbers. Edward Tufte, The Visual Display of Quantitive Information, 1983.
QUESTIONS?? Copy of slides or sample Excel sheets email to smarek@datavisiontech.com