Spreadsheet Day happens on October 17 every year, and has done since 2010, when the first computer spreadsheet program, VisiCalc, became available on the Apple II computer. Rather than waiting until October 17 to appreciate everything the spreadsheet can do, however, why not get started now? Too many Excel users have minimal knowledge of this robust app. Microsoft Excel has been the number one spreadsheet app for over 30 years because it can do more than most office programs. But if all you can do is use it as a database, you haven’t crossed over to being a spreadsheet professional.
Learn To Use the Shortcuts
If you want to be an expert spreadsheet user, you’ve got to learn how to move through your sheets quickly and efficiently. Learning the shortcuts helps you maximize your work time. Each day, you should find a few new shortcuts to use and memorize. Eventually, you’ll learn all of the shortcuts you need to use your spreadsheets like a pro.
Manage Your Data Analysis
With Excel and other spreadsheet apps, you can manage your data in one convenient place. In fact, a large percentage of IT professionals use spreadsheets to track data and assets. You can compare columns in Excel using the IF function or the Equal to Sign Operator, as well as conditional formatting and highlighting.
Using a spreadsheet should make your data management more efficient. When users don’t know what they are doing, their work slows down. Learn to manage data analysis effectively, and watch your productivity increase.
Fill Cells Quickly
Spreadsheets are only as effective as the people who use them. If you are manually entering data, you are wasting your time. Instead, you can speed up your data entry by letting your customers do it. They can fill out forms that populate spreadsheets. Your customers and employees can help you without even knowing it. To quickly populate your data, you can turn to Excel’s Text Import Wizard, as well as other wizard tools. The wizard gets into the Word forms to fill in the cells of your spreadsheet. Then you can start analyzing the data and put it to good use.
Along with the Wizard, you can turn to Flash Fill to get your data to format automatically. Excel will recognize patterns, so if you start typing in dates like 12302020, but you want Excel to turn the month into a world, Flash Fill takes care of it for you as soon as you’ve typed December 12, 2020 in the second cell.
The chances are that your business uses Excel, but are you really maximizing its use? To increase productivity and make the most of what Excel has to offer, make sure you know what it can do and how you can use it to its full potential.
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