Essential Excel Tips and
Tricks
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Excel Tips and Tricks
•
•
Retrieving values from tables with a common column
– vLookup
Suppose you have two excel sheets with some common
column and some different columns. You can get the value
for different column using vLookup.
For example:
In the Test.Xls, in
WS1 we have Project
Number and Ratings
for different
Questions. In WS2,
we have Project
Number and Name.
So in order to get
Project Name in WS1,
you follow the
following steps
In WS1, Insert
Columns in the
beginning and copy
and paste the common
column (preferably left
most column) and
different column from
WS2 and sort in
ascending order for
common column
Now in WS1, if you
remove Columns
A&B (as they are
needed any more),
you will see that
Values in Name
Column has become
#REF as the formula
is invalid.
To avoid this
problem, you can
make the values
permanent – basically
remove the formula
but retain the value by
doing Paste Special
and Select Only
Values after copying
the column.
Converting Row Data
in a Pivot Table to
Column Data
Now if you see the
Pivot Table Report, you
will see that Data is
coming in Rows where
as you need the data in
columns.
Excel Tips and Tricks
5. Finding Unique Values in a set
of values – Advanced Filter
a. Now in WS1, you have some
project names but some of them
repeat. You are interested to know
how many unique names / values
are there. This you can do by using
Advanced Filter.
•
Select cell B2, Go to
Window Freeze
Pane. Now you can
scroll the Scroll Bar and
see columns which were
not visible earlier and
still see the left most
column.
Now there are many
Rows for Project 6 and
you would like to
Group them so that
they look like one
Record but without
hiding or deleting the
rows. Select the Rows
except the first row in
the Project 6 rows
Writing multiple row data in a single
cell
To write multiple rows data in a single cell,
Press Alt-Enter after finishing first row
data in the cell
10. Text Wrapping in a cell
• You may have text which does not fit into
the width provided in the Column, so
select Cells, Go to Format Cells
Alignment Wrap Text
Excel Tips and Tricks
11. Restricting cell values - Data
Validation – List of Values
•
Now you would like to put your Project
Managers to put locations for Projects in
WS2 but would like to restrict the values
to Locations like Delhi, Bangalore and
Pune. This is called Data Validation and
you can do that by following steps:
Choose a cell
location till which
people are unlikely
fill data, for the
example purpose, I
am doing this in Cell
C15, Put the Values
to be Chosen in
Rows.
•
Go to Cell C2, Go to
Data Validation
Select Allow
Value to be List
In Source Choose
List of Values
Go to Data Text
to Columns
Choose Delimited (if
Separated by any
special character or
Fixed Width as
appropriate)
Select Delimiting
Character (here it is
Comma) and see the
result
But you would like to
put % Covered as a
Line graph rather
than bar graph, Right
Click on the Data
Series (Yellow bar),
Choose Chart Type
as Line Type and
then see how the
graph looks now
Excel Tips and Tricks
16. Changing color of a cell given a
condition - Conditional formatting
•
Now in WS5 sheet, you would like to
color cells with Growth Rate greater
than 5 as Green and those below 5 as
Red color, you can do the same by doing
Conditional Formatting.