Cool Tips and Tricks for Excel

Some of us rarely open Microsoft Excel, others never close it all day long. Regardless of how you use Excel, we’ve compiled some cool tips that are sure make your work easier. Although these tips apply to Excel 2007, some will work with earlier versions.

Status bar calculations - There are times when you just need a quick calculation and creating a formula is a pain. The new status bar can show you quick calculations on the fly without writing any formulas - just highlight a group of numbers and you can get an average, a count or the sum.

If you don’t see this information on the status bar, you need to turn it on. Move your mouse to the status bar at the bottom of the Excel window and right click. The Customize Status Bar context menu with appear, displaying the numerous options available. The Average, Count and Sum options must be selected for this tip to work properly.

Zoom control - In earlier versions of Excel, if you needed to change the worksheet magnification, you had five preset choices on the toolbar or you needed to go into the View menu and make your change. Excel 2007 has a handy slider at the bottom of the screen that makes zooming fast. Just click on the zoom slider and move it to the size you want.

View switcher - Word and PowerPoint have had view switcher buttons for years. Now Excel has them too.

These buttons on the status bar quickly allow you to switch between a normal spreadsheet view , a page layout view and a page break preview

The page layout view makes it easy to to add headers and footers using a Word-style view. The page break preview lets you adjust the page breaks on your spreadsheet for better looking prints. If you don’t see the buttons, use the Customize Status Bar menu to turn them on.

Insert worksheet - Many of us never use multiple pages in Excel but for those of us who do, this is a time saver. When you’ve used the three default sheets and need a new create a new one, use the Insert Worksheet button to quickly add one to your file.

If you find Excel is not working the way you think it should, give us a call at (949) 481-1232 and we’ll help you out.