Step Up Your Microsoft Excel Game With These 11 Hacks

We all have a friend or two who work in finance with mean spreadsheet skills. They whiz through without ever touching their track pad, selecting and shifting cells faster than your mind can process. Even if your job doesn’t call for mean MS Excel skills, it’s impossible to deny that it’s among, if not the most important computer programme in the workspace. From budgeting to organising client lists, Excel is powerful and takes years to master. Get started with our 11 simple tips, which we guarantee you’ll incorporate in no time at all. ***Don't forget to check out last week's 13 Microsoft Word Hacks You Need In Your Life, and stay tuned for the final of our 3-part series next week: hacks for Powerpoint!

Add multiple rows at once by highlighting the number you want to add in the preexisting rows, right click, and select “Insert”
Remove duplicated information by selecting the column, and selecting ‘Remove Duplicates’ under ‘Data’
Transpose your information (change data in a row into a column or vice versa) by highlighting and copying the data, select the area you want to transpose it to, right click, select ‘Paste Special’, and choose ‘Transpose’
Split information in one column into two (e.g. when you want to alter the data set of people’s names into two columns of first and last names) by highlighting the column, select ‘Text to Columns’ under ‘Data’, choose ‘Delimited’ or ‘Fixed Width’ based on your information, and Finish
Create a Conditional Formatting formula (e.g. assign a colour to the top 10% of your data) by highlighting the information, select ‘Conditional Formatting’, and choose the conditions
Input values starting with 0 by including a single quote (‘) before the number (e.g. ‘00098)
Select the entire column by using Control + Space, select the entire row by using Shift +Space, and select cells as you scroll by holding down Shift
Change numerical data into percent by highlighting the information and using Control + Shift + %
Insert the current time into a cell by using Control + Shift + : (Colon)and Insert the current date into a cell by using Control + Shift + ; (Semicolon)
AutoFill a series of data by inputting the first 2 cells and dragging the information to the selected cells
Calculate a column of data (e.g. dividing a column of data by 2) by copying a cell with the number two, highlight the column you want to calculate, right click ‘Paste Special’ and select ‘Divide’