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5 Quick Tricks for Excel to Save You Time & Keep You Organized

2 minute read

Excel Blue

From using keyboard shortcuts to color coding your tabs, here are five of our favorite tricks in Excel to save time and stay organized.

1. Use the CTRL key for shortcuts

This is an excerpt from our post CTRL Your Excel Spreadsheet with These Shortcuts.

The CTRL button is a powerful tool in Excel. While you may have the menu options memorized, keyboard shortcuts can save you some extra clicks. Once you have these CTRL commands memorized, we guarantee that your productivity will increase in Excel.

 

2. Quickly remove formatting from your Excel spreadsheet

This is an excerpt from our post Quickly Remove Formatting From Your Excel Spreadsheet.

Formatting is a great way to annotate an Excel spreadsheet. Whether you’ve added a comment to a certain cell to call attention, or bolded the line items most important to remember, your annotations can help you parse through a spreadsheet.

However, when the time comes when you need to share the spreadsheet with someone else who doesn’t need to see your annotations, for example, cleaning up your formatting could become a daunting task. Here are three ways to quickly remove formatting from your spreadsheet.

 

3. Color code your tabs

This is an excerpt from our post 3 Easy Tips to Save Time in Excel.

If you’re looking for specific information in large Excel files, color coding tabs can be very useful for keeping your data neat and organized.

 

4. Save Excel charts as templates

This is an excerpt from our post How to Save Excel Charts as Templates for Mac.

Although Excel has a lot of great basic chart formats, they can be too general to be useful for many real-world applications. For a more customized approach, here’s how to save your own charts as templates in Excel.

 

5. Use keyboard shortcuts to insert tables, select rows/columns, and more

This is an excerpt from our post 8 Useful Keyboard Shortcuts for Excel.

Insert table

PC: Ctrl + T 

Mac: ^T

Use this shortcut to quickly insert a table. You will be asked where the data is for your table, and then your table will automatically be created.

Select entire row

PC: Shift + Space

Mac: ⇧ + Space 

Selecting an entire row can be a great timesaver. Use this shortcut to select a single entire row. Bonus: Hold down Shift and the up/down arrows to select multiple rows.

Select entire column

PC: Ctrl + Space

Mac: ⌃ + Space 

Likewise, selecting entire columns can be a great timesaver too. Bonus: Hold down Shift and the left/right arrows to select multiple columns.

For more keyboard shortcuts, check out the link above.

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