Top 7 Hacks for Microsoft Excel That’ll Save You Hours in 2023
There is nothing that’s more time-saving than learning a few solid Microsoft Excel hacks.
Microsoft Excel is one spreadsheet tool that’s useful in various tasks from keeping a family budget to analyzing data. It’s an easy software to pick up and make good use of, yet not many would learn to be very efficient with the program.
That’s where this tutorial of useful hacks for Microsoft Excel comes in.
Whether you are making a family travel budget for the next adventure or at work keeping the stock inventory, these hacks will save you hours. Plus, if you are an excel user at work, knowing these spreadsheet tricks will quickly turn you into an Excel pro!
Without some good time-saving tips, it’s too easy to spend hours and days cleaning up the spreadsheets and formatting them right.
If you’ve gotten frustrated repeating tedious tasks on Excel, it’s time to learn these 10 most powerful Excel hacks.
There is nothing that’s more time-saving than learning a few solid Microsoft Excel hacks.
Microsoft Excel is one spreadsheet tool that’s useful in various tasks from keeping a family budget to analyzing data. It’s an easy software to pick up and make good use of, yet not many would learn to be very efficient with the program.
That’s where this tutorial of useful hacks for Microsoft Excel comes in.
Whether you are making a family travel budget for the next adventure or at work keeping the stock inventory, these hacks will save you hours. Plus, if you are an excel user at work, knowing these spreadsheet tricks will quickly turn you into an Excel pro!
Without some good time-saving tips, it’s too easy to spend hours and days cleaning up the spreadsheets and formatting them right.
If you’ve gotten frustrated repeating tedious tasks on Excel, it’s time to learn these 10 most powerful Excel hacks.
1. Auto-adjust cell sizes
If you’ve been manually adjusting cell sizes by dragging the corners of the column and row headers, then you need this trick.
You can actually auto-adjust your cell sizes for the entire worksheet in just two clicks.
Step 1: Click the Select All button that sits above the row headers and to the right side of the row headers. You can also use the shortcut CTRL+A or Command+A for Mac to select all cells.
Step 2: Double-click between columns A and B to auto-adjust column width. Double-click between rows 1 and 2 for the height of the cells.
That’s it! You have perfectly sized cells for the entire worksheet.
2. Spell check
Unlike other Microsoft Office programs, Excel doesn’t have spell check automatically. If you don’t get into the habit of running a spell check before you turn in your work, it’s too easy to have some spelling errors.
Thankfully, it’s an easy fix, and all it takes is one keyboard shortcut.
Step 1: Select your entire worksheet by pressing CTRL+A or Command+A for Mac. You can also do this by clicking the Select All button. (see Hack 1, Step 1).
Step 2: Press F7 on your keyboard to run the spell check.
When you are dealing with a small table with 10 rows, scrolling up and down isn’t too hectic. But when you are dealing with hundreds and even thousands of rows, manually scrolling down through your data set isn’t efficient.
There is a better, faster way.
Step 1: Press Ctrl (or Command on a Mac) and the up and down arrows.
This will take you to the bottom and top of the data set in an instant.
4. Input Numbers Starting with 0
If you’ve been using Excel for some time now, you know the program doesn’t generally accept numbers starting with 0 and deletes 0s.
For example, if enter a value ‘0023566’ into a cell, Excel will delete the 0s and return ‘23566’.
But what if your data set includes a set of values starting with a zero?
This workaround will ensure that you can record those values without a hutch.
Here is how.
Step 1: Add a single quote (‘) mark in front of the value that starts with a zero.
Example: ‘0023566
5. Insert More Than One Rows or Columns
One crucial way to boost your productivity while using Excel is to cut out any repetitive work. One minor work that we do repeatedly is adding new rows and columns.
Here is a quick tutorial on how to add multiple rows and columns at a time to save you some time.
Insert Rows
Step 1: Select the same number of row headings you want to insert. For example, if you want to insert 5 new rows, select 5 rows.
Do this by holding down Control and selecting the number of rows you want to add.
Step 2: Choose ‘Insert’ from the pop-up menu.
Insert Columns
Step 1: Select the same number of column headings you want to insert. For example, if you want to insert 5 new columns, select 5 existing columns.
Do this by holding down Control and selecting the number of columns you want to add.
Step 2: Choose ‘Insert’ from the pop-up menu.
6. Combine First and Last Names
Whether you are in charge of your family holiday card order or customer list at work, this is an easy hack that can save you hours.
This operator allows you to create a single column with a Full Name, combining the first and last name from two different columns.
While I’m using this operator to create a Full Name column, you can use it for other purposes as well.
It truly has countless applications.
All it takes is one operator.
Step 1: In a cell that you want to insert a full name, add this operator: =A2&” “&B2
In this example, A2 contains the first name and B2 contains the last name.
Make sure you point to the correct cell when using this operator.
7. Format Values Instantly
If in your worksheet, you have a column of numbers that represent certain values like percentages, dollars, and such, this is a quick hack
you’re working in a sheet where all of the numbers in a certain column represent certain values, such as percentages, but there isn’t a percent sign behind each number, you can fix that for an entire column at once.
Simply type: Ctrl – Shift – %
This trick should add percent signs to all of your values in the column. The same trick can be used for the dollar sign as well.