Presentation Topics for Excel PowerUsers Talk

[Maureen5433]

All,

As part of my job, I have been tasked with giving a 30 minute presentation to present some Excel "PowerTips" to other associates in my department. PowerTips, to me, are key combinations, tools, and capabilities that Excel has built-in that most "standard" users don't know about. For instance, when I shared with the group the instructions for pulling unique entries out of a list using advanced sort, I was surprised that no one knew about the tool.

Sooo, since you are the experts, and definately power-users, I thought I might get some input from anyone willing to share a good power trick they might have learned or even a good lesson learned when using Excel. No macros - way too advanced for this group but tricks and tools that exist that few people know about.

As always, thanks for your help. I look forward to reading your replies.

Maureen5433

 

[acw]

Maureen

Where to start!!!!

1) Double click a cell to see the parents.
2) To autofill a formula beside an existing column of data, double click the bottom right corner of the cell
3) To debug a formula, highlight parts of the formula to evaluate and press F9.
4) To move through sheets, CTRL PgUp/PgDn
5) To move through workbooks, CTRL Tab
6) To selected row(s) from a range of cells: Shift Space Bar
7) To selected columns(s) from a range of cells: Ctrl Space Bar
8) In graphs, use the drop down error bar to separate historical from forecast data
9) Standard Addins (to get extra functionality - especially dates)
10) Goal Seek and Solver
11) Data Validation
12) Named Ranges (both user defined and auto generated)
13) Grouping and outlining
14) User customised toolbars
15) Freeze panes and window splits
16) Right click options
17) Conditional Formatting

That should take at least 30 minutes!!!


Tony

 

[Bubbis Thedog]

Hi, there!

A lot of people where I work want hyperlinks in cells --whether it be to other sheets, Word documents, etc. That's a neat thing to show 'em sometimes. Also, showing people how to link cells is quite popular for me.

Bubbis

 

[SonicBoomGolf]

I would definetly include a list of all the shortcuts Excel has. You can save enormous amounts of time by learning these. Some of my favorites are F4 (Repeat Last), CTRL + Z (Undo, saved me more than a few times), CTRL + C (Copy) and CTRL + V (Paste). Even though they are very small time savers, when you do these processes a few hundred times a day it really adds up.

Here is a good link that details all the shortcuts.
http://www.asap-utilities.com/index.php?page=p_sh.php

Hope that helps.

 

[Tazguy37]

If you deal with a lot of formulas, Control-` to toggle between normal view and formula view. (You'd be surprised how many Excel users don't know that one!)

 

[PA HS Teacher]

What do your "standard users" typically do or need to do with excel. In talking with people that some of the excel functionalit I take for granted is not "standard" to everyone. Similarly, I find one small nuance of excel almost every day I read this forum. Do they crunch numbers? Do the manage lists of information? Do they like to make pretty pictures?

How much do your users, use excel? (how many hours per week?

Btw - I don't think I saw some of the more obvious answers in the lists above.

- normal filtering/sorting.
- Conditional formatting (with formulas for criteria),
- inserting comments (printing comments a the bottom of a sheet)
- SumProduct function for multi conditional counts and sums.