The Most Effective Methods for Using Microsoft Excel

The Handle for Filling

Yes, some individuals still duplicate formulas one cell at a time or drag formulas down a column to copy them all the way down. Please don’t do that again!!

When your formula is separated from other data, double-click the fill handle to have it automatically fill down. It’ll come to an end when there are no more data to go along with it. As seen in the left-hand picture below, the Fill Handle is the tiny blob that appears in the bottom-right corner of any chosen cell. It changes from a fat plus sign to a skinny plus sign as you hover your cursor over it, as shown in the figure below on the right.

DataText to Columns

Let’s say you have names in column A, as shown below, but you want to conduct a mail merge and address them as Mr. Smith. How do you separate Smith’s surname from his first name?

Make use of the DataText to Columns function. Choose DataText to Columns from the menu after selecting column A.

For the sake of this demonstration, we’ll select Delimited from the Text to Columns wizard’s options, then choose Commas and Spaces as our delimiters, as seen below.

After pressing Finish, our data has been split as displayed.

Fast Data Entry

Select a group of cells, input the value or text, and then press Ctrl+Insert to quickly enter the same value into them all.

F4 Key

This is a shortcut key that I regularly use in Excel and Word. Assume you’ve just unlocked one cell and now you need to unlock 20 others that are strewn over your worksheet. Hold down the Ctrl key to select all of those cells, or use the F4 key to select smaller groups (which are much easier to manage). F4 will repeat the previous command. You could use it to color-fill cells, format cells in the same way as the last one you formatted, and so on.