Master Your Spreadsheets with These 3 Excel Tips

If there’s one program that is used across nearly all industries, Microsoft Excel is likely it. The ever-popular spreadsheet problem has been a cornerstone of the computing experience since the beginning of computers themselves.

Despite this long history, many people today still aren’t all too familiar with the program and may require some excel tips to get started. The program can be so handy once you’re able to use it that you’ll be kicking yourself for not learning earlier.

Ready to learn how to use Excel? Read on, and we’ll walk you through some basic tips and tricks.

1. Adding Multiple Rows & Columns

Depending on the amount of data you need to process, you might need to manage a great array of information. That’s a lot more than the few default columns and rows you have set up will be able to manage.

Yes, you can easily learn how to add a row or a column. However, you might find to your hire that you only know how to add one at a time. Adding the dozens or even hundreds of rows you need might feel impossible.

There is a shortcut, have no fear!

To add multiple rows or columns at a time, you just need to highlight the same number of existing ones that you want to add. Right-click these and then press insert and the new rows or columns should populate.

If you wanted to add twelve rows, you would just need to highlight twelve rows and do the simple keystroke mentioned above. New rows should appear instantly. As easy as that!

2. Performing Calculations

If you’re looking to do just a little simple math in Excel, it couldn’t be easier to manage. The program can do calculations simple and complex, but often it is the simple tricks that users need most often.

All you need is one simple sign between numbers to do math quickly and easily. + and – will obviously do your adding and subtracting while * and / can be used to multiply and divide.

If you remember your order of operations, you’ll also know to use parenthesis if you need certain parts of an equation done first. In this way, you can have Excel do all your basic math for you so you don’t have to worry about it in your head.

3. Using VLookup to Pull External Data

There’s a lot you can do with Excel that will allow the program to interact with computing processes outside of the program itself. You can learn how to read excel file in c# or you could integrate excel documents within cloud systems.

However, the most helpful tool you might have at your disposal is the ability to pull data from other spreadsheets or documents with ease. For example, what if you have a file somewhere that has a list of names and e-mails but you need to combine it with their names and companies in another spreadsheet?

It could take hours to do this all manually. As long as you have one column that is identical; however, you should be able to do it all within seconds.

You simply need to use the =VFORMULA shortcut and specify the destination you want to pull the data from, whether it be another sheet, file, or so forth.