Terrific Tips: Excel Tricks

From Dawn, one of CFLC’s trainers, come these two great Excel tips. Thanks, Dawn!

1. Watch your cursor! In any given cell, the Excel cursor can have several shapes and do different things depending on the shape. When one or more cells are selected, the cursor can be:

The “fat plus” (Excel’s normal selecting cursor) – mid-cell – ready to accept data from you;

The “skinny plus” (Excel’s “AutoFill” cursor) – in the lower right-hand corner – ready to be dragged vertically or horizontally to create a series;

The arrow – on the borderline of the cell – ready to drag the contents of the cell to another and replace whatever’s in there.

2. Amaze your non-Excel-using friends and co-workers by adding astonishingly large numbers in your head (not!). It will simply seem like magic if they don’t know where you’re looking for the answer.

Enter a column of numbers, select all the cells, and look at the bottom border of the program (just above the taskbar). If you do not see “Sum = X” there near where it shows “NUM” as your data format, then right click on that bottom border. You should see a dropdown menu offering choices of Average, Count, Count Nums, Max, Min, and Sum. Click on Sum and the “Sum = X” choice should show on the border. Voilà! A veritable Rain Man has been created!

To learn both the basics and more tips and techniques for using Excel, come to either of the upcoming Excel 1 workshops – the first at CFLC on Friday, July 15, and the second at Volusia on Wednesday, August 3.

SUBJECTS: TERRIFIC TIPS; WORKSHOP WEALTH