Microsoft Excel is an online program that is used by a wide variety of people- from teenagers for their statistic assignments to your colleagues in business corporations for many different reasons. And yet strangely enough, not everyone has heard about certain features and shortcuts you can use to make the program function easier for you. Here are 5 small lifehack functions you should know about:
1. Inserting space for a new line of the same cell
Creating a line break in an excel cell isn’t just simply clicking on your enter key anymore. But it can still be accomplished through pressing and holding ALT and enter during the editing mode. Simple, quick and easy shortcut to remember the next time you want to create another line. If you notice that your new line gets cut off, don’t worry it’s still there. To make it be displayed, you need to wrap text, which you can find in the Home tab under alignment.
2. Function Inputting (Auto)
You can input functions through the Insert Function button ( fx symbol) or choosing it from the formula menu tab. If it yields no result, select the relevant function under the insert tab. This will create a pop up that helps you generate and input it. The pop up will explain what it functions as, and prompt you for information it needs.
3. Function Inputting (Manual)
If you want to manually insert functions into your cell instead of having to refer to the formula tab and adding them in, you can do so by typing IF and open bracket, and excel will give you a prompt that displays function formats to show you what arguments you can insert. You can also manually select the part of where you want to input functions and they will automatically help you insert a reference.
4. Autofilling
If you have numeric values or repeated values, you can save time by using the autofill feature in Excel! First, enter your beginning value to the cell you want the starting point to be. Then, drag the fill handle across all the cells you want filled and excel will fill it for you by either copying what you have inserted or give numeric sequences.
5. Text to number conversion
If there are errors like numbers changing into texts when you don’t want them to be, there will be an error indicator from Excel. What you can do is select the cell that you want converted, bring up the error checking menu and select the convert to number option.
These features are simple but convenient and once you have gotten them memorised, you will find just how much more efficient your daily tasks can go!
