My co-worker Jonny recently told me that he used to hate Excel until he saw me use it. I think I’m still in shock that someone could hate Excel. I am a huge Excel nerd. There’s very very activities that I love more than getting lost in spreadsheets. A few years ago I converted to Mac at home. I love everything about Macs EXCEPT Excel for Mac. Compared to the PC version, using it feels like torture.

My favorite Excel features:

F4.  Use the F4 key to repeat the last thing you did (i.e. if you just made a cell green, use F4 to make another cell green. If you just deleted 3 lines, use F4 to delete 3 more lines). If F4 isn’t working on your PC, make sure F-lock is disabled. This feature is a no-go in a Mac.

Format Painter. I hate wasting time on formatting. But thankfully, the format painter button means I only have to format once and then I can easily “copy” that formatting to other cells. I use format painter so often that I like to add it to my “Quick Access Toolbar”

The Quick Access Toolbar in Excel

Customizing the Quick Access Toolbar (only on the PC version). For weeks after I converted to the new ribboned version of Excel, I struggled to find the functions I needed. Thankfully they added the ability to customize the Quick Access Toolbar. There are 2 ways to do this: 1) Selecting the downward facing arrow on the top bar, selecting “more commands”, then look for the function you want. Here’s a step-by-step visual on how to do this. 2) Right clicking on the function then selecting “Add to Quick Access Toolbar”

Filtering. I often use Excel to track large amounts of information and filtering allows me to find the information I need.

• A tip I’ve learned the hard way: If you add a column after turning on filtering, double-check that the filter icon is showing up in the top cell. If it’s not showing up and you sort your spreadsheet, the information in that column won’t sort. To fix, just turn the filtering feature off and then back on.

Find/Replace. Find and replace is often a life-saver. Right now I’m putting together a marketing plan for 2013, but because it’s 2012, every date I enter defaults to 2012 unless I type in the year. By using find/replace I can quickly replace all 2012 dates with 2013. The speeds up my data entry. I like to use the short cut Command (or Control on PC) + F

• Using an asterisk makes it even more handy. If you type a comma and then an asterisk (,*) in the FIND box and then leave the REPLACE box blank, Excel will delete everything to the right of, and including, the comma. If you type an asterisk and a dash (*-) Excel will delete everything to the left of, and including, the dash. If you want to keep the dash, just type a dash into the REPLACE box.

Freeze Panes. When working with a lot of data, this feature is also incredibly helpful. It allows me to see the top and left cells even if I scroll to the bottom or far right of the worksheet. Learn how to use the freeze pane feature.

Copy/Move sheet. If you want to copy an entire sheet to another workbook (that is currently open) you can move the entire sheet, formatting and all, in a few clicks. Learn how.

A few features I really like, but that I don’t use very often:

• Text to column. I use this when I have information in one column that I want to split into multiple columns.
• Validation. This feature allows for more accurate data entry. I prefer to validate using a list that lives on a different worksheet.
• Remove duplicates. This button makes identifying unique values in a long list quick and easy.
• Group. This is great when I’m working with large groups of information that I want to condense or subtotal.

If you don’t mind “tech speak,” this blog has some tips and tricks that I love to use, plus a few that I was really excited to learn.

My Favorite Excel Formulas

In addition to the normal addition, subtraction, multiplication, division and sum formulas, these are the top 3 that I use that make my life easier.

=WORKDAY(  I use the workday formula for planning purposes. It allows me to calculate when a project should start (if I have the due date) or when a project will be finished (if I know when I’m starting it) and it accounts for weekends and any holidays I want to exclude. Check out this post on how I use the workday formula to project plan.

=CONCATENATE(  I use concatenate when I want the values of multiple cells to be “added together” into one cell or when I have additional text I want to add to other cells. This blog has a good step-by-step instruction for using the concatenate function.

=VLOOKUP(  I use vlookup to compare information from multiple worksheets. Check out this step-by-step guide to using the vlookup formula in Excel.

On occasion I also like to use:

• =MIN( =MAX( and =AVE( I use these formulas when I want to know the average, minimum and maximum values of a group of cells
• =IF(  The if formula is more advanced than most of what I covered here. There are a lot of uses for it, but I primarily do a =IF(A2=””,””,FORMULA) calculation that says, if cell A2 (or whatever cell I’m calculating off of) is blank, return a blank value. If it’s not blank, then do this FORMULA. And the calculation I want to do is nested where it says “FORMULA”.
• =PROPER( =LOWER( = UPPER( These 3 formulas will change the case of text in a cell to Proper Casing, lower casing or UPPER CASING.
• =COUNT( will tell you how many cells in a range contain a value

Excel formulas can get gnarly really quickly. Just do a google search and you’ll see what I mean. I always suggest keeping it as simple as possible. And to do a sanity test on the results of your formulas.

Other Excel related blog posts:

• Using Excel for Resource Planning (using stacked bar charts to make simple Gantt charts)

I recently discovered the value of vlookup in excel. And I keeping finding more and more ways and reasons to use it. Last week a co-worker needed to compare values on a report from two different dates. We were chatting about it and I realized the vlookup would solve her problem.

In this example, I have sales reports from 3 separate days.

I want a quick look at how much revenue I made, by product, over all 3 days.

Step 1: I want a consolidated list of products.

• Step 1a: I’ll copy the values from column A in all 3 sheets into a new workbook
• Step 1b: I’ll highlight the column
• Step 1c: I’ll go to the Data Ribbon and select Remove duplicates
• Step 1d: When it asks me, I’ll confirm that I want to remove the duplicates

Step 2: Create Formula. =VLOOKUP(A2,’Day 1′!A:D,4,FALSE)

What this says is in English is:

• Go to sheet Day 1 [‘Day1’!],
• Look at the information in columns A thru D [A:D],
• Find the row that says “Shoes” [A2]
• Then give me the value that is in column 4 in the row that says “shoes”
• And only display information if the value in A2 is EXACTLY the same [FALSE].

The logic for the formula is in this order: the value we’re looking for [A2], the place where we are looking to find it [‘Day 1’!A:D], the column with the information we want to display [4], and we want exact values [FALSE]

Step 4: Use the formula for column C, but link to Day 2’s worksheet.

Step 5: Use the formula for Column C, but link to Day 3’s worksheet.

Step 6: Copy values down for all rows.

This is what you should end up with. Here’s the spreadsheet if you want to practice. You’ll notice that this returned errors for the products that didn’t sell on certain days. There are two solutions to this.

SOLUTION 1: more steps, but less complicated

If you won’t be constantly updating the spreadsheet, you can do a quick and easy copy/”paste value” and find/replace:

Step A: Select all cells

Step B: Copy. I prefer Command (or Control on PC) + C

Step C: Right click, select “Paste Special”, then select “Values”

Step D: Do Find/Replace. I like to select Command (or Control for PC) + F, then select the “Replace” button. Type in #N/A in the Find box and leave the Replace box empty. Select “Replace All”

Now you have cleaned up data and you can run calculations or create charts with it.

SOLUTION 2: the more complicated formula solution

If you’ll be using this spreadsheet on an ongoing basis, I’d suggest an =IF( formula.

We’re starting with
=VLOOKUP(A2,’Day 1′!A:D,4,FALSE) and we’re going to change it to
=IFERROR(VLOOKUP(A2,’Day 1′!A:D,4,FALSE),””)

What this says in English is: If there’s an error when doing this formula, then give me a blank cell.

There’s a quick and easy way to move an entire Excel worksheet to a different workbook.

Side note: A workbook is what you’d typically think of as an Excel file. It can contain multiple work sheets. Worksheets are added, deleted and managed in the tabs at the bottom.

I’ve seen people copy entire worksheets using copy/paste. Which works fine, especially if you know the trick that clicking the box in the top left (right between A and 1) will highlight everything in the worksheet. However, this often means that you’ll need to reformat your column widths and row heights. A good solution to this problem is to copy the entire worksheet at once.

Step 1: Open both workbooks (the one with the worksheet you want to move and the one you want to move it to).

Step 2: Right-click on the tab for the worksheet you want to move. This will give you a menu. Select “Move or Copy”

Note: It’s possible to copy multiple worksheets at once, all you need to do is hold down Command (for Mac) and select multiple tabs BEFORE you right-click

Step 3a: Select the workbook you want to move your worksheet to

Step 3b: Select “Create a copy” (if you want to keep a copy in your current workbook)

Step 3c: Select ok.

Now your entire worksheet has been copied to another workbook.

When I switched to the ribboned version of Excel it was indescribably painful. I was quick and efficient at Excel and I knew exactly where I needed to go to get what I wanted. The ribboned version blew all of my knowledge out of the water. This interactive tool from Microsoft was very useful. But I also grew to love the Quick Access Toolbar and every time I go to use Mac for Excel I’m disappointed that I don’t have one.

Step 1: select the little down arrow next to the current Quick Access Toolbar options

Step 2: Select “More Commands”

 Step 3: This should give you a screen like this:

There are a number of functions/commands that I like to utilize in Excel that I can’t ever find unless I add them to my quick access toolbar. The main one being the option to “Select Visible Cells”.

Step 1: Grab the bar on the far right side and drag down

Step 2: Drag until the top bar to below the cells you want frozen at the top

Step 3: Grab the bar on the bottom right and drag to the right.

Step 4: Drag the bar until it is to the right of the cells you want frozen on the left.

Step 5: Freeze the panes. On a Mac go to the Window menu and then select freeze pane. On a PC, you’ll go to the View menu. One nice time saver on the PC version is it has the option on the View / Freeze Pane menu to freeze the first row and/or the first column.

UPDATE: As a response to this post, my friend Michelle asked how to make the same rows print at the top of every page. Go to Page Set-up and select the “Sheet” tab. Click the strange button to the right of the “Rows to repeat at top:” box and then select the row(s) you want. The option to repeat columns on the left is right below if you want to do that.