Archives for Excel Tips

You’ve finished your spreadsheet. It looks great with the perfect chart! You print it. One column of data is printing on a second page. UGH! You want it all on one page! You can fix this with just a few clicks. Go to Page Layout from the Excel menu at the top. From here, click on the arrow in the bottom right corner. Click on the tab labeled Page. Under t...

Read More About Excel Tips & Tricks – Fit to Page

When you enter a formula into a cell, you have the option to copy that formula down your entire column. This is really nice when you want Excel to change the cell letter and number each time. For example, Excel knows to change “A1 + B1” to “A2 + B2” in each adjacent row. But what if you don’t want Excel to automatically change the formula information? Wha...

Read More About Excel Tips & Tricks – Use $ for a Static Formula

Have you ever had a spreadsheet with a column of negative numbers and you want them to be positive? This is easy to do with a just a few clicks of the mouse. Let’s say Column B contains 100 numbers and they imported into your spreadsheet as negatives. You want to prepare a chart with these numbers and you need them to show as positive numbers. Simply move...

Read More About Excel Tips & Tricks – Change the value of Negative Numbers

The “If” Function is a great Excel tool that can be used to add a little logic to your spreadsheet. For example, if you want to add, delete, or change data based on certain criteria, you might be able to “tell” your data to do so by use of the “If” function. In today’s example, let’s say we want to add data. We want to add a column of data in our spreadsh...

Read More About Excel Tips & Tricks – The If Function

Do you ever find yourself wanting to take a picture of your screen, or even just a portion of your screen, and save it? Did you know that Windows comes with a built-in “snipping” tool? In Windows 10, you can search for “Snipping Tool” from the start button. Once you have the snipping tool open, you can select the drop-down arrow next to Mode to choose whi...

Read More About Hidden Feature in Microsoft Windows – Snipping Tool

Have you ever wondered how to add a trademark symbol or a check mark? Click on the cell that you want to contain the symbol. From the Insert tab, select Symbol. For the trademark™, copyright©, or registered® symbol, click the Special Characters tab. Scroll down until you find the symbol, select it and click OK. For a check mark ☑ or infinity symbol ∞, cli...

Read More About Excel Tips & Tricks – Adding Symbols

During a recent client training, a client wanted to submit an Excel file to us, but their file was in Adobe PDF format. I helped them convert the file to Excel and they were super grateful. Now I’d like to share this tip with you! Assume you are in a PDF document and  want to convert it to Microsoft Excel. Follow these steps: Go to File Select Export To...

Read More About Excel Tips & Tricks – Save as Another File Type

Do pesky extra spaces ever get in your way in Excel? They do for me – especially when I export from other programs. Let’s say you have a column of First and Last Names, but instead of displaying “Bob Jones”, they are displaying “   Bob   Jones   “. Let’s remove those spaces with a simple function called “Trim”. In the adjacent cell, enter “=trim(A1)”. (Of...

Read More About Excel Tips & Tricks – Trim function

Have you every wanted to sum your data by category? I hope you didn’t do this manually. Excel has a subtotal feature that will do this for you. Let’s suppose you have a worksheet that has product orders. The columns might be Product Category (Toys, Clothes, Bath & Body, etc.), Date, Number Sold, and Price. You want to see how much you’ve sold in each...

Read More About Excel Tips & Tricks – Subtotal Data

Excel is a smart software. If you are performing calculations in your spreadsheet, Excel can do a lot of the work for you. Let’s say you have a column of numbers that you want to total. All you need to do in Excel is scroll to the bottom of the column and click the first available empty cell. From the Home tab, select the Auto Sum icon. It looks like the...

Read More About Excel Tips & Tricks – Auto Sum