Excel 2010 is one of the most popular tools of the Microsoft Office package because it offers decisive advantages for the creation of calculations, settlements and tables. Probably you’ve had to surrender to Excel 2010 before – today we’d like to give you more helpful hints and tricks about Microsoft Excel 2010 that will hopefully help you create powerful and impressive documents without major problems.
THE FIRST TIP: USE PIVOTTABLES
A pivot table helps to display and analyze large amounts of data quickly and easily in calculations. It is based on a table containing a wide range of information, such as production and sales data.
From this data source, a pivot table can be created with just a few clicks in which data is automatically consolidated. Among other things, the data can be summarized with one click, e.g. by quarters and/or months.
THE SECOND TIP: CONDITIONAL FORMATTING HELPS TO SAVE TIME
In particular, it makes sense to color different values differently for statements in order to highlight them both within Excel 2010 and in printed form. For small tables, it is not much work to color the values individually, but for a large amount of data, this is unthinkable. For this reason, Excel offers conditional formatting, which greatly simplifies these highlights: For example, you can choose to display numbers larger than 100 in green, larger than 200 in yellow, and larger than 300 in red, or all duplicates can be highlighted in red – there are no limits to your possibilities, because with Excel 2010 and conditional formatting, you have the reins in your hand.
THE THIRD TIP: INSERT SEVERAL LINES OF TEXT
Many users are already desperate to add multiple lines of text to Excel 2010 – but it’s actually quite simple. To enter multiple lines of text in a cell, you need a line break. However, when you press Enter, the cursor jumps directly to the next line. So simply hold down the ALT key while you type the line break with the Enter key – it’s easy to place multiple lines of text in a cell.
THE FOURTH TIP: REFERENCES IN TABLES
Using the SVERWEIS function in Excel 2010, you can easily link a value from Table 1 to a value from a table in your workbook. To illustrate the relevance of this function, we would like to give you a brief example:
Suppose you want to grant a discount based on an amount paid by a customer.
From 1000 € 1%, from 2500 € 2% and from 5000 € 3%. With the SVERWEIS this is no problem.
As you will see, over time this reference function will develop into a valuable helper, which will make your work much easier in a wide range of applications.
THE FIFTH TIP: HIDDEN DOUBLE-CLICK FUNCTIONS IN EXCEL 2010
Even a double-click in Microsoft Excel 2010 offers an amazing potential, as numerous functions and features can be conveniently called up with it:
By double-clicking on the separator between the rows or columns, you can automatically adjust the width or height to the optimum size, for example. Formulas can also be easily transferred with a single double-click, as shown in a small example:
Suppose you have a number in column A and a number in column B that you would like to sum in column C. No problem, as you know you simply enter =SUM(A1:B1) or =A1+B1 and the result appears in the third column. If you have filled a total of 100 rows with numbers, simply select cell C1 and double-click on the small black square in the lower right corner and the formula will be applied to all subsequent rows.
This auto-complete function by double-clicking in Excel 2010 can be used with almost all formulas and saves a lot of work, especially with large tables.
THE SIXTH TIP: SELECT CELLS CONVENIENTLY
To jump directly to a specific cell or to select a range, you can simply enter the desired position in Excel 2010 in the text field on the left above column A and confirm with the Enter key: For example, if you enter B15, Excel will automatically jump to this position. You can select a larger area as a separator by using the colon. For example, if you enter A1:B5, all cells between A1 and B5 will be selected – in this case ten cells.
THE SEVENTH TIP: REMOVE EMPTY LINES IN EXCEL 2010
Blank lines often interfere with the overall picture in tables, but there is also a simple trick to removing them: First select a column and press F5, then click the Contents button and select Blank lines. Click “OK” to display all blank cells in the selected column. Now enter Ctrl- (Delete cells) and select the option “Whole row”. Now the empty rows will be removed from the table.
To record one
Microsoft Excel 2010 offers much more than these functions. Our article is intended to show what Excel is capable of in addition to everyday work and what small, useful features and tools this powerful program from the Office Suite brings with it. And, of course, there are hardly any limits to what you can do, because Excel 2010 offers you suitable functions for any activity – and if not, numerous developers have interesting macros, plug-ins and extensions ready for you.