MrExcel LX The Holy Grail of Excel Tips
eBook - ePub

MrExcel LX The Holy Grail of Excel Tips

Covers Excel Backwards and Forwards

  1. 218 pages
  2. English
  3. ePUB (mobile friendly)
  4. Available on iOS & Android
eBook - ePub

MrExcel LX The Holy Grail of Excel Tips

Covers Excel Backwards and Forwards

About this book

These are the 125 essential tips that all Excel users need to know. MrExcel LX provides users with a concise book that can be absorbed in under two hours. Includes a section with keyboard shortcuts. Anyone who uses Excel will be able to turn to any page and pick up tips that will save them hours of work.

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Yes, you can access MrExcel LX The Holy Grail of Excel Tips by Bill Jelen in PDF and/or ePUB format, as well as other popular books in Computer Science & Desktop Applications. We have over one million books available in our catalogue for you to explore.

Information

Publisher
Holy Macro! Books
Year
2019
Print ISBN
9781615470631
eBook ISBN
9781615473700
Edition
1
Topic
Computer Science
Subtopic
Desktop Applications
Index
Computer Science
#1 Double-Click the Fill Handle to Copy a Formula
You have thousands of rows of data. You’ve added a new formula in the top row of your data set, something like =PROPER(A2&" "&B2), as shown here. You need to copy the formula down to all of the rows of your data set.
First names in column A. Last names in column B. A formula of =PROPER(A2&" "&B2) is in cell C2.
Many people will grab the Fill Handle and start to drag down. But as you drag down, Excel starts going faster and faster. There is a 200-microsecond pause at the last row of data. 200 microseconds is long enough for you to notice the pause but not long enough for you to react and let go of the mouse button. Before you know it, you’ve dragged the Fill Handle way too far.
If you drag the fill handle, it is easy to shoot past the end of the data set and end up hundreds of rows below the last row of data.
The solution is to double-click the Fill Handle! Go to exactly the same spot where you start to drag the Fill Handle. The mouse pointer changes to a black plus sign. Double-click. Excel looks at the surrounding data, finds the last row with data today, and copies the formula down to the last row of the data set.
Cell C2 is selected. A square dot in the lower right corner of the cell is called the Fill Handle. Hover the mouse over the dot and the mouse cursor changes to a black plus sign. When the + sign appears, double-click to copy the formula.
In the past, empty cells in the column to the left would cause the “double-click the Fill Handle” trick to stop working just before the empty cell. But as you can see below, names like Madonna, Cher, or Pele will not cause problems. Provided that there is at least a diagonal path (for example, via B76-A77-B78), Excel will find the true bottom of the data set.
In row 77, a person with only a first name and no last name. While the blank cell in B77 would have previously caused the Double-Click-The-Fill-Handle to stop at C76, it now goes all the way to the bottom of the data.
In my live Power Excel seminars, this trick always elicits a gasp from half the people in the room. It is my number-one time-saving trick.
Alternatives to Double-Clicking the Fill Handle
This trick is an awesome trick if all you've done to this point is drag the Fill Handle to the bottom of the data set. But there are even faster ways to solve this problem:
  • Use Tables. If you select one cell in A1:B112 and press Ctrl+T, Excel formats the range as a table. Once you have a table, simply enter the formula in C2. When you press Enter, it is copied to the bottom.
  • Use a complex but effective keyboard shortcut. This shortcut requires the adjacent column to have no empty cells. While it seems complicated to explain, the people who tell me about this shortcut can do the entire thing in the blink of an eye.
Here are the steps:
1. From your newly entered formula in C2, press the Left Arrow key to move to cell B2.
2. Press Ctrl+Down Arrow to move to the last row with data—in this case, B112.
3. Press the Right Arrow key to return to the bottom of the mostly empty column C.
4. From cell C112, press Ctrl+Shift+Up Arrow. This selects all of the blank cells next to your data, plus the formula in C2.
5. Press Ctrl+D to fill the formula in C2 to all of the blanks in the selection. Ctrl+D is fill Down.
Five steps are shown. 1. Press Left Arrow to move from name in C2 to last name in B2. 2. Ctrl+Down to reach end of data in column B. 3. Press Right Arrow to move to mostly empty column D. 4. Ctrl+Shift+Up Arrow to select from C112 to C2. 5. Ctrl+D to Fill Down, copying the formula at the top of the range to all of the cells in the range.
Note: Ctrl+R fills right, which might be useful in other situations.
As an alternative, you can get the same results by pressing Ctrl+C before step 1 and replacing step 5 with pressing Ctrl+V.
Thanks to the following people who suggested this tip: D. Carmichael, Shelley Fishel, Dawn Gilbert, @Knutsford_admi, Francis Logan, Michael Ortenberg, Jon Paterson, Mike Sullivan and Greg Lambert Lane suggested Ctrl+D. Bill Hazlett, author of Excel for the Math Classroom, pointed out Ctrl+R.
#2 Break Apart Data
You have just seen how to join data, but people often ask about the opposite problem: how to parse data that is all in a single column. Say you wanted to sort the data in the figure below by zip code:
City, ST, Zip are in column A. With the data selected, choose Data, Text to Columns. In step 1 of the wizard, choose Delimited instead of Fixed Width.
Select the data in A2:A99 and choose Data, Text to Columns. Because some city names, such as Sioux Falls, are two words, you ...

Table of contents

  1. Dedication
  2. About the Author
  3. About the Contributors
  4. Foreword
  5. #1 Double-Click the Fill Handle to Copy a Formula
  6. #2 Break Apart Data
  7. #3 Filter by Selection
  8. #4 Bonus Tip: Total the Visible Rows
  9. #5 The Fill Handle Does Know 1, 2, 3…
  10. #6 Fast Worksheet Copy
  11. #7 Use Default Settings for All Future Workbooks
  12. #8 Recover Unsaved Workbooks
  13. #9 Simultaneously Edit the Same Workbook in Office 365
  14. #10 New Threaded Comments Allow Conversations
  15. #11 Create Perfect One-Click Charts
  16. #12 Paste New Data on a Chart
  17. #13 Create Interactive Charts
  18. #14 Show Two Different Orders of Magnitude on a Chart
  19. #15 Create Waterfall Charts
  20. #16 Create Funnel Charts in Office 365
  21. #17 Create Filled Map Charts in Office 365
  22. #18 Create a Bell Curve
  23. #19 Plotting Employees on a Bell Curve
  24. #20 Add Meaning to Reports Using Data Visualizations
  25. #21 Sort East, Central, and West Using a Custom List
  26. #22 Sort Left to Right
  27. #23 Sort Subtotals
  28. #24 Sort and Filter by Color or Icon
  29. #25 Consolidate Quarterly Worksheets
  30. #26 Get Ideas from Artificial Intelligence
  31. #27 Create Your First Pivot Table
  32. #28 Create a Year-over-Year Report in a Pivot Table
  33. #29 Change the Calculation in a Pivot Table
  34. #30 Find the True Top Five in a Pivot Table
  35. #31 Specify Defaults for All Future Pivot Tables
  36. #32 Make Pivot Tables Expandable Using Ctrl+T
  37. #33 Replicate a Pivot Table for Each Rep
  38. #34 Use a Pivot Table to Compare Lists
  39. #35 Build Dashboards with Sparklines and Slicers
  40. #36 See Why GETPIVOTDATA Might Not Be Entirely Evil
  41. #37 Eliminate VLOOKUP with the Data Model
  42. #38 Compare Budget Versus Actual via Power Pivot
  43. #39 Slicers for Pivot Tables From Two Data Sets
  44. #40 Use F4 for Absolute Reference or Repeating Commands
  45. #41 Quickly Convert Formulas to Values
  46. #42 See All Formulas at Once
  47. #43 Audit a Worksheet With Spreadsheet Inquire
  48. #44 Discover New Functions by Using fx
  49. #45 Use Function Arguments for Nested Functions
  50. #46 Calculate Nonstandard Work Weeks
  51. #47 Turn Data Sideways with a Formula
  52. #48 Handle Multiple Conditions in IF
  53. #49 Troubleshoot VLOOKUP
  54. #50 Use a Wildcard in VLOOKUP
  55. #51 Replace Columns of VLOOKUP with a Single MATCH
  56. #52 Use the Fuzzy Lookup Tool from Microsoft Labs
  57. #53 Lookup to the Left with INDEX/MATCH
  58. #54 Preview What Remove Duplicates Will Remove
  59. #55 Replace Nested IFs with a Lookup Table
  60. #56 Suppress Errors with IFERROR
  61. #57 Handle Plural Conditions with SUMIFS
  62. #58 Geography & Stock Data Types in Excel
  63. #59 Dynamic Arrays Can Spill
  64. #60 Sorting with a Formula
  65. #61 Filter with a Formula
  66. #62 Formula for Unique or Distinct
  67. #63 Other Functions Can Now Accept Arrays as Arguments
  68. #64 One Hit Wonders with UNIQUE
  69. #65 SEQUENCE inside of other Functions such as IPMT
  70. #66 Replace a Pivot Table with 3 Dynamic Arrays
  71. #67 Dependent Validation using Dynamic Arrays
  72. #68 Complex Validation Using a Formula
  73. #69 Use A2:INDEX() as a Non-Volatile OFFSET
  74. #70 Subscribe to Office 365 for Monthly Features
  75. #72 Less CSV Nagging and Better AutoComplete
  76. #73 Speed Up VLOOKUP
  77. #74 Protect All Formula Cells
  78. #75 Back into an Answer by Using Goal Seek
  79. #76 Do 60 What-If Analyses with a Sensitivity Analysis
  80. #77 Find Optimal Solutions with Solver
  81. #78 Improve Your Macro Recording
  82. #79 Clean Data with Power Query
  83. #80 Render Excel Data on an iPad Dashboard Using Power BI
  84. #81 Build a Pivot Table on a Map Using 3D Maps
  85. #82 The Forecast Sheet Can Handle Some Seasonality
  86. #83 Perform Sentiment Analysis in Excel
  87. #84 Fill in a Flash
  88. #85 Format as a Façade
  89. #86 Word Cloud using Custom Visuals in Excel
  90. #87 Surveys & Forms in Excel
  91. #88 Use the Windows Magnifier
  92. #90 Avoid Whiplash with Speak Cells
  93. #91 Customize the Quick Access Toolbar
  94. #92 Create Your Own QAT Routines Using VBA Macros
  95. #93 Favorite Keyboard Shortcuts
  96. #94 Ctrl+Click to Unselect Cells
  97. #95 More Excel Tips
  98. Appendix: Excel Stories
  99. Index