The Ins and Outs of Excel Microsoft Excel is one of the most useful tools in the Microsoft Office package. It is simple to manage, and incredibly easy to master, once you figure out all the little Ins and Outs of the program. This post is designed as a little Microsoft training in Kuwait to help you master the use of this east-to-use program. Take a look at the tips below. First, Excel is a beast when it comes to formulas. It has the ability to automatically calculate just about any mathematical problem you can imagine. All you need is (1) data to manipulate, (2) a couple open cells to put formulas into (which is easy with an unlimited number of cells available to you), and (3) a basic knowledge of the formulas available to you. Considering that the first is up to you and the second is given, just learn the basic commands to calculate totals.
Excel Formulas If you select a cell and press the “=” sign and the first letter of a function you’re looking for, you will be given a drop down menu to select a function. For the time being, type in “sum” until the word appears highlighted in the box. Without pressing enter just yet, open a parenthesis so it looks like this: “=sum(.” Then click the first box you want the sheet to sum. Then, while holding shift, click the last box you want it to add in. Click “enter” to make it automatically add all of the selected boxes. Instead of clicking the boxes, you can also add the individual cells into the formula by naming them: letter, number (like this: E27). Separate the different boxes with commas to complete the formula. You can do a similar procedure for all of the basic formulas, e.g. average and subtotal. Find out more formulas from Microsoft training in Kuwait Second, Excel has a number of useful tools built into the program to make inputting data quicker. The one that sticks out most is making a long list of dates. Say you want to build an excel sheet that lists the dates of each day in a year. That’s 365 dates you’d have to manually put in.
Short Cuts Luckily for you, Microsoft has already thought of this. Write out the first two days of the year in cells A1 and A2. Highlight them both and hover your cursor over the bottom right-most corner of the highlighted boxes. Your cursor should change into a black cross. When you see that cross, click the mouse and drag it down. You’ll see that Excel auto-fills the dates of all the cells with days of the year. It’ll even include February 29 for leap years. You can also use this tool to populate the same number over and over again. Fill in one cell with a “1” for example. Hover the cursor over the bottom right-most corner of the cell and click on the black cross again. Drag down a couple cells and release the button. The cells will auto populate with the number 1. These are just 2 of the easiest functions about Excel that can make your life infinitely better. Seek out more Microsoft training in Kuwait to find out more about how helpful this program can be. Photo Credit: kickrjason , adamci