Did You Know?
MS Excel Tips: There are more than 750 million users of Microsoft Excel across the world, making it the number 1 platform for data visualization and analysis.
Moreover, around 81% of global businesses utilize MS Excel in all of their departments for a variety of applications.
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This blog will let you know about Excel basics and the tips and tricks to excel with it.
What is MS Excel?
Microsoft Excel is a powerful data analysis and visualization software that utilizes spreadsheets to store, arrange, and track data sets that contain formulas and functions. It is used when you have huge amounts of data that are to be stored, analyzed, and reported. You can use Excel to handle clumsy and long data sets.
This tool is commonly used by accountants, marketers, data analysts, data scientists, and other professionals who are required to work with data. It is so simple that any person with a basic knowledge of computers can use it. You can even use it to keep track of your daily expenses and maintain your budgets.
MS Excel is a part of MS Office Suite.
Because of its powerful computational features, it is mainly used for creating financial documents. With Excel, it is easy to find sums, means, and totals, making it easier to read and understand for everyone. While excel is popular for its potential accounting features, it is also popular among marketers to track any type of data. The best part is that it eliminates the need for counting cells or copying/pasting numbers of performance.
Excel Fundamentals
You should get acquainted with some of the basic concepts of Excel before the tips you wish to know. Some of them are:
- To create a new spreadsheet from scratch
- To execute fundamental computations including addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division
- To write as well as format column text and titles
- To use auto-fill features of Excel
- To add or remove single rows, columns, and spreadsheets
- To keep titles of rows and columns visible as you scroll past those rows and columns such that you are aware of what data you fill as you move down your spreadsheet
- To sort your data in alphabetical order
How to Use Excel?
In order to use Excel, you are required to input the data into rows and columns. Then typically you use functions and formulas to transform this data into meaningful insights.
Let’s look at the type of documents you can create with Excel.
Types of Documents
Balance Sheets: This is one of the most common applications of Excel documents that you can create. It enables you to have a comprehensive view of the financial status of your company.
Income Statements: Excel Spreadsheets can be utilized to track the sales activity and financial health of your company.
Calendar: another common application of Excel Spreadsheets is creating a monthly calendar to create reminders, track events, or data-sensitive information.
For marketers, there are specific documents that can be created with MS Excel.
Marketing Budgets: MS Excel is known as a popular budget-keeping tool. It allows you to create and manage marketing budgets and spendings as well. There are many resources from where you can download templates if you don’t wish to create the document from scratch.
Marketing Reports: if you are not familiar with a marketing tool, you might be required to use a dashboard with all of your reports. You can use Excel instead, as it is a versatile tool that can be used to create marketing reports.
Editorial Calendars: editorial calendars can be easily created with Excel. The tab format of Excel makes it easy to track efforts of content creation from custom time ranges.
Traffic and Leads Calculator: Excel is widely used for making all types of calculators because of its strong computational powers. This also includes a calculator for tracking traffic and leads.
Besides the documents listed above, there are many more types of documents that can be created using Excel.
Formulas in Excel
There is a wide range of formulas in Excel that can be used to create different formulas to make sense of your data. If you are a novice Excel user then you should know these formulas to create complex formulas.
- Equal (=) – you are required to write an equal sign in the cell where you want the result to come, before creating any formula.
- Add: when you wish to add the values of two cells you have to use the ‘+’ sign. For example A3+B4
- Subtract: when you wish to subtract the values of two cells, you have to use ‘-’ for example A5-B2
- Multiply: when you wish to multiply the value of two cells, you use ‘*’. For example A2*B3
- Division: when you wish to divide the values of two cells, you use the ‘/’ sign. For example A4/B2
You can create a complex formula by using all of these at once. One thing to remember here is that while creating complex formulas, you need to use parentheses in order to avoid any accidental mistakes. So, the order you should follow for complex calculations is the PEMDAS order of operations.
Excel Tips and Tricks
There are some Excel tips and tricks that make it easy to use Excel and make your documents powerful. They are:
- To recognize and make sense of your data, use Pivot tables
- You can add more than one row or column
- To simplify your data, use filters
- You can remove duplicate data sets or points
- You can transpose rows into columns
- Try to split text information between columns
- The above-mentioned formulas and functions can be used for performing simple calculations
- Calculate the average of numbers in your cells
- You can use conditional formatting to make cells change color based on data automatically
- When you want to automate certain cell functions, you can use the IF Excel formula
- To keep one cell’s formula the same irrespective of where it moves, you can use dollar signs
- You can use the VLOOKUP function when you want to fetch the data from one area of the sheet to another
- INDEX and MATCH formulas can be used to fetch data from horizontal columns
- The COUNTIF function can be used to make Excel count numbers and words in any range of cells
- You can use an ampersand to combine cells
- Add checkboxes
- You can hyperlink any cell to a website
- You can add drop-down lists
- Use the format painter
Some of the basic formulas and tips to make your Excel sheet attractive are discussed above. To learn the practical implications of these, you can take up a free Excel training offered by Simplilearn.
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FAQ: Easy MS Excel Tips and Techniques
What is the fastest way to improve Excel skills?
One of the best ways to improve Excel skills is to learn how to use its shortcuts. You can use your keyboard, mouse, or touchpad to make a lot of things faster. For example, you can add a comment to any cell. You can use this to write down reminders, notes, or cross-reference other workbooks. To add comments, go to the Edit menu and click the New Comment tab. You can type a comment into the cell by clicking on the “Comment” toolbar.
What is VLOOKUP in Excel?
What is VLOOKUP in Excel? is a powerful function that lets you find data by its ID. You can use this function to find data by its ID. The default value for VLOOKUP is an approximate match, which is TRUE in this case. To find out more, visit the Excel Tech Community. Here, you’ll find helpful resources and tutorials to get you started. But for now, let’s look at an example.
What is macro in Excel?
A macro is a program that is designed to repeat the same action, or set of actions, over again. A macro is a great way to automate certain tasks, and is especially useful for people who use Excel frequently. Its name, macro, refers to its repetitive nature. In Excel, it is possible to record as many macros as you need. The great thing about a macro is that you can run it as many times as you want.
