Excel Tips
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Removing Borders in Excel
Here is a quick way you can remove any borders applied to a cell or group of
cells: press Ctrl + _. (That is the underscore, which means you must hold down the Shift
key as well.) Excel leaves the other formatting of the cell set, but removes any borders.
Quickly Enter Data in Excel
One of the shortcuts provided in Excel allows you to copy data from the cell
above the current cell. All you need to do is press Ctrl + '. (That's an apostrophe.)
Automatically Wrap Text in Excel
To wrap text in a cell, do the following:
1. Type a sentence into a cell.
2. Press Ctrl+1, and select the Alignment tab.
3. Select the Wrap text checkbox.
4. Click OK.
Enter the Date in Excel
To enter the current date in a cell, select a cell and press Ctrl + ;
(semi-colon).
Check All Sheets in an Excel Workbook
If you run Spell Check in Excel, it only checks the current worksheet. If you
want to check all of the worksheets at once, select all of them before you run the Spell
Check. An easy way to select all sheets is to right-click on a sheet tab and choose Select
All Sheets from the menu that pops open.
Keyboard Shortcut for AutoSum in Excel
Select the cell below your column of data. Press Alt + = on your keyboard. The
formula to sum the column of data is inserted with the cell references in place, just as
if you'd actually clicked the AutoSum button.
Quickly Delete Rows and Columns in Excel
You can delete rows or columns by using the menu bar, but there is a quicker way
to do it. All you need to do is select the row or column that you want to delete, and then
press Ctrl + - (that's Ctrl and the minus sign at the same time). Excel removes the row or
column.
Display What You Need in Excel
When you're working with a small worksheet in Excel, there's no need to squint at
the screen to see those few dozen cells. Instead, you can instruct Excel to display only
the area you need to use. To do this, select the area and then choose View, Zoom. When the
Zoom dialog box opens, select the "Fit selection" button and click OK.
Make Excel Worksheets Fit Your Paper
Large worksheets in Excel can make for cumbersome printouts, but it's easy to get
Excel to print your worksheets the way you want them.
1. With your worksheet open, select File, Page Setup.
2. Select the orientation for the worksheet. Landscape works best when the number of
columns exceeds 20.
3. In the Scaling section of the dialog box, click "Fit to," and then use the
arrows to indicate the number of pages wide and number of pages tall the worksheet should
be. (You can leave the "pages tall" box blank if you're concerned only about
keeping your printout one page wide.)
4. Click the Print Preview button to check the results.
5. Click the Zoom button in the Print Preview window. If you can read the worksheet on
screen, you'll be able to read it on paper. If not, you've squeezed your worksheet into
too few pages.
6. To check the position of page breaks, click Page Break Preview while in the Print
Preview window. Scroll down until you see a blue line indicating a page break. If it's not
where you want it, click and drag it up. (You can't drag it down.) Click File, Print
Preview to return to the Preview window.
7. When you're satisfied, click Print in the Preview window or the Page Setup dialog box
to put your worksheet on paper.
Arrange Workbook Windows in Excel
If you have more than one workbook open at a time, Excel allows you to view all
the workbooks at the same time.
1. Choose Arrange from the Window menu.
2. Choose Tiled, Horizontal, Vertical or Cascade. Experiment to see which view works best
for what you are doing.
3. Click OK. The windows are all displayed according to your choice.
Transpose Data in Excel
If you start creating a worksheet and realize that you should have made your
columns into rows and your rows into columns, Excel provides an easy way to correct this.
This process is known as transposing data. To transpose your data, follow these steps:
1. Select the range of cells you want to transpose.
2. Press Ctrl+C to copy the data.
3. Select the cell that will be at the top-left corner of your newly transposed data.
4. Choose Paste Special from the Edit menu. Excel displays the Paste Special dialog box.
5. Select the Transpose check box.
6. Click on OK. Your data appears at the point you specified, but it is transposed.
View Work Full-Screen in Excel
There may be times when you want to see as much of your worksheet as possible.
You can quickly maximize your worksheet to replace virtually everything else on your
screen by choosing Full Screen from the View menu. When you are done working with Excel in
this manner, click on the on-screen button to restore the regular view, or press the Esc
key.
Change the Default Font in Excel
You can change the default font in Excel, but it's a little different from the
way you do it in Word. With Excel open, go to Tools, Options, and click on the General
tab. In the lower section, next to Standard Font, use the pull down lists to select the
font name and size, then click OK. Excel will need to be restarted in order for the change
to take effect.
View Excel Gridlines In Color
To view Excel gridlines in a color other than the default black, choose Tools,
Options and click the View tab. Click the arrow at the right side of the Gridlines Color
box. Select a color. Click OK. If you print this on a color printer with gridline printing
activated, the worksheet border will print in your selected color. However, the gridlines
will still print in black.
Mouse Free Borders in Excel
You can use the Format Cells window to create custom cell borders in MS Excel
without using your mouse. Select the cells you wish to border, open the Format Cells
window (Format, Cells or Ctrl + 1), and click the Borders tab.
You can use the Tab key to move between sections and buttons on the tab. Once you tab over
to the line style section, you can use arrow keys to make a new selection.
To apply or remove borders, use the following key combinations. (Excel will use whatever
line style is currently selected when applying a border).
Alt + T for the top of a cell group border
Alt + B for the bottom of a cell group border
Alt + L for the left of a cell group border
Alt + R for the right of a cell group border
Alt + D for the diagonal border from the upper left to the bottom right corners of each
highlighted cell
Alt + U for the diagonal border from the lower left to the upper right corners of each
highlighted cell
Alt + H for the horizontal cell border between individual cells in a highlighted cell
group
Alt + V for the vertical cell border between individual cells in a highlighted cell group.
Use the key combination once to activate the border and again to remove it.
Merge Cells In Excel
If you want a title to span several columns in an Excel worksheet, you need to
use the Merge and Center button in Excel's toolbar. Type in your title, then select all of
the cells that your title spans. Click the Merge and Center button (to the right of the
Align Right button).
Quickly Add Sheets to an Excel Workbook
If you need to add worksheets to an Excel file, press Shift + F11 and Excel adds
a new blank worksheet before the sheet you are working on at the time.
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