You should know these MS Excel skills if you are using MS excel

If you are using excel for whatever reason then knowing these skills will definitely increase your productivity. These are not advanced but moderate skills. You can manage with excel without knowing these skills but knowing these skills will improve the proficiency in Excel.

1. Defining named tables.

You can define a range as a table and give a name to it. Later you can use this name in a formula. You can also use these named tables in references.

Under formulas menu bar, select Define names. Then give a name to the tables, for example, Sales. Then select the range and select ok. After you create the named table, you can use the table name 'Sales' in the formula to calculate the sum.

2. Autofill 

Using autofill you can complete the series based on the current values. For example, if you want to fill multiple of a number, you can enter the first 2 numbers of the series and click on the autofill icon and drag down the column. In the newer version of the office, you will get multiple options. 

The options are

copy cells

This will repeat the already available items, instead of completing the series with the next numbers. 

Fill series

Completes the series with the next values. 

Fill format only

It will ignore the values. Just copies the format of the existing cells. It can alternate the colors based on the selection.

Fill without formatting

This will ignore the format but copies the value of the series. 

3. How to get to the new line within a cell

As you know Excel is a spreadsheet tool, the basic building block is a cell. Unlike any word processing tool, if you press 'Enter Key' it will take you to the next cell. What if you want to enter a new line within the cell. You can do that by holding 'ALT' key and pressing 'ENTER' key. 

4. Data bars

If you want to represent your data visually amazing, you can use data bars. It is very simple and it looks very attractive. The data needs to be numerical values. This is one kind of conditional formatting. You can create a bar horizontal graph just by applying a conditional format. 

Select the range you want to apply the format. Go to Conditional formatting and select Data Bars. Under the gradient fill, select whatever color you want. 

   

If you want the Data Bars in a separate column, then copy the values in the next column. Apply the conditional format on the new column but not on the old column. Edit the condition formula and check the box 'Show Only Bars'

5. Paste special 

Under the paste special you have options like transposing a the selected. That means you converted a row into column and column to row. 

You can paste only the value if the source is a formula

You can paste only the formula, not the values. 

You can also link destination cells to the source cell. By this, you can make sure that any change in the source will also get affected by the destination. 

6. Text to column


Suppose you have a bank statement in PDF format. If you bring the statement into excel you will have a lot of options to analyze it. One example would be a BRS, Bank Reconciliation Statement. Import the statement to excel and apply formulas on the imported statement.

You can split the single line into multiple columns based on a specific delimiter. In the below example list folders and files have been extracted to a text file and it contains columns like date and time, type of the file, and the name of the file and folder. Each of these columns can be split into separate columns in the excel. Once the data is in tabular form, it can be used for various analyses. In this case, you can sort the files based on their creation date or based on the names, etc.

After converting a single line into multi-column 

7. Auto-sizing a column width or row height. 

By clicking on the line between 2 rows or a column, you can auto adjust the width of the column or height of a row based on the content of that column or row.

8. Row and column selection shortcuts 

Ctrl + Space	To select the entire column
Shift + space	To select an entire row
Ctrl + Shift + Space:	The First click will select the filled range surrounded by the current cell. Second, the space press selects the entire worksheet.
Ctrl + shift + +	Insert a new row or a column
Ctrl + -	To delete a row or a column

  

How to swap 2 excel ranges | swap with multiple cells selected

I had created a macro to swap 2 cells values in MS Excel. By just clicking a button a macro could interchange the content of 2 excel cells.  There was a limitation on that macro. It could only work only if the selection is just 2 cells. It could interchange the value of just 2 cells but not the ranges. I used to get a lot of request from my viewers to extend this macro for more than 1 cell. Due to time constraint, I could not work on it.

Excel VBA macro to swap 2 values in cells

Now, I have written another macro which will work on the Excel ranges. This macro is completely different. My original macro was based on area selection. But the new macro is based on the ranges. It is very small and easy to understand, unlike another macro, which is comparatively bigger.

I will explain each of the lines in the macro.

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1. Sub swap_2_ranges()

2. string_all_selected_area = (Selection.Address(ReferenceStyle:=xlA1, RowAbsolute:=False, ColumnAbsolute:=False))


The first line is the subroutine name. The second line gets the string of value of all the ranges selected. The output will be "I23,H25,G22" format. It says 3 ranges are selected. Each range is separated by a comma. I will use this string later to get the ranges.

3. array_selected_area = Split(string_all_selected_area, ",")

The above line splits the multiple ranges into one range and stores them in an array

4. If (UBound(array_selected_area) = 1) Then
5. area1 = array_selected_area(0)

6. area2 = array_selected_area(1)

Then, there is an if condition to check if the selection is suitable for our swap operation. It will not work as expected if we select more than 2 ranges. or less than 2 ranges. Our purpose is to swap or interchange the content of 2 different ranges. So the selection should be exactly 2 ranges.

After this check, the selected ranges are stored in 2 temporary variables.

7. selection_1 = Range(area1)
8. selection_2 = Range(area2)

The variables are converted to Excel ranges. This is very important, as we are not getting selection directly in the Excel range format. Instead, the selection is in text format. The string values should be converted into an Excel range object so that we can apply some Excel VBA functionalities.

9. If Range(area1).Count = Range(area2).Count Then

Then comes one more if condition to check if the selected ranges have the same number of cells. It is obvious that we should have the same number of cells on each selection so that we can interchange their values.

10. Sheets(1).Range(area2) = selection_1
11. Sheets(1).Range(area1) = selection_2

This is actual swapping code. This is achieved through the temporary variables.

12. End If
13. End If

14. End Sub

Finally ending the if conditions and the Subroutine.

Practical Text Manipulation using MID LEFT RIGHT FIND Functions in MS Excel

Text manipulation is one of the great features of MS Excel. It has a lot of built-in functions to extract desired values from a text. By using different combinations of these functions we can create a complex formula.

I have listed a few practical examples which are very useful.

Extracting a Door number from an address text. 

8314 W. Galvin Lane West Des Moines, IA 50265

68 4th Ave. Neptune, NJ 07753

8 Oklahoma St. Ladson, SC 29456

I will use the LEFT and FIND functions to extract the Door number of an address. 

=LEFT(B4,FIND(" ",B4))

Here I am using the delimiter space (" "). The formula first finds a space character which appears after the door number. Then extracts the value whatever if at the left side of the first space. 

Extracting a ZIP code from an address 

Generally, the ZIP code will at the end of the address. Using the RIGHT function, we can extract the ZIP code 

=RIGHT(B9,5)

Extracting a specific number from anywhere in the text 

Suppose, from the below text I need to extract the dollar amount Which may be present anywhere in the text. For this, I will use multiple functions. For better understanding and for clear visibility,  I have separated the functions. If you understand them clearly then you can create your own complex formula. 

I had $100 in my pocket
bought 2 pens for $1 each
Spent $50 for snacks. 
Now I have $48 left

First, identify the starting position of the Dollar symbol.

=FIND("$",B10) Then identify the next

Then identify the next space after the Dollar symbol and the digits using the below functions

=FIND(" ",B10,FIND("$",B10))

Finally, extract the context between the first index, tha is a dollar sign and the space character after the amount. For this, I am using the mid function

=MID(B10,C10,D10-C10)

Extracting the names from a text 

The below data has names mixed with some other text. The left part does not have any unwanted text. So we don't have to worry about the left part. But the right portion has other text and we want to remove that. The text marked in red are to be removed. 

John Smit (IT Dept)
Krishh J (Sales)
Priore Priore (Software)

Lucy S (Sales)

It is very clear that we need to extract the text up to the first "(" symbol. This is can be done using a FIND and MID functions. Note the -1 at the end of the formula. This is to exclude the "(" character. Because the FIND function will return the position of the "(". But we don't need it. 

=LEFT(B17,FIND("(",B17)-1)