MS Excel

Tips & Tricks

Ramzan Rajanis Favorite
Volume 1 2013

Ramzan Rajani
Microsoft Excel Specialist
Microsoft Certified Trainer

MS Excel

Tips & Tricks

Contents
1) Quickly Insert System date / time...................................................................................... 1
2) Combining first & last name / product ID & product code ............................................... 2
3) Convert your Horizontal data into Vertical ....................................................................... 3
4) Highlight duplicate records ............................................................................................... 4
5) Removing duplicate records .............................................................................................. 5
6) Split first name and last name into separate cells .............................................................. 6
7) Change Case of Text in Excel ........................................................................................... 7
8) Protect worksheet - Protecting your data from modifying ................................................ 8
9) Protect workbook - Protecting your sheet from deletion ................................................... 9
10) Protect your excel file with password while opening .................................................... 10
11) Pin Documents, Workbooks to the Recent File List in Excel ....................................... 11
12) Compare 2 Excel Files using View side by side Mode ................................................. 12
13) Working with several Excel files everyday? Use workspace feature ............................ 13
14) Use Text Format to Preserve Leading Zeros in Excel ................................................... 14
15) Use fixed number of zeros in the starting of number .................................................... 15
16) Shortcuts (Select/Insert/Delete/Hide& Unhide rows, cols & sheets) ............................ 16
17) Quick Filtering ............................................................................................................... 17
18) Creating drop down in cells for Region / Country / City orTeam ................................. 18
19) Shortcuts (Alignments / Borders / Sorting /Filtering / Hide/ Unhide Ribbons) ............ 19
20) Removing extra spaces for the sentence (TRIM) .......................................................... 20

MS Excel

Tips & Tricks

1) Quickly Insert System date / time

You can use below functions & shortcuts to insert system / current date & time.
=TODAY() and =NOW()
Function
=today()

Will insert date

=now()

Will insert date & time

Both the above formulas are dynamic, means if you open the Excel file next day,
you will get the current date & current time updated.

If you dont want to update, then use the below shortcuts to insert date & time.
Keyboard Shortcut for inserting date & time
Ctrl ;

Will insert date

Ctrl Shit ;

Will insert date & time

If you would like to insert next day date or yesterday date.

Function
=today()+1

Will insert tomorrows date

=today()-1

Will insert yesterdays date

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MS Excel

Tips & Tricks

2) Combining first & last name / product ID & product code

Above formula can be written in this way also =Concatenate(B2," ",C2)

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MS Excel

Tips & Tricks

3) Convert your Horizontal data into Vertical

Steps
1) Select A1 to P4
2) Press - Ctrl C - To copy the data
3) Select Cell A8
4) Press Ctrl Alt V (Shortcut of Paste Special)
5) Select Transpose OK

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MS Excel

Tips & Tricks

4) Highlight duplicate records

Want to find duplicate or unique entries in Excel 2010?

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MS Excel

Tips & Tricks

5) Removing duplicate records

Microsoft has made it quicker to remove duplicates, all it takes now is two simple steps.

Steps:
1) Keep your cursor on any cell inside the data or select whole data.
2) Data Ribbon Remove Duplicates (As shown in the above screenshot)
3) Unselect All
4) 4) Select Emp ID column and click on OK

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MS Excel

Tips & Tricks

6) Split first name and last name into separate cells

Use the Convert Text to Columns Wizard in Excel when you need to split combined data into
separate columns, such as a first name and last name; or city, state, and zip code. This type
of combined data often results when you open or import files created in another
application.

1) If necessary, insert blank columns to the right of the cells you want to convert into
multiple columns.If you want your data in three columns, you must have two blank
columns

Steps:
Select Column B
Data Ribbon --> Text to column
Select Delimited --> Next
Select Space --> Finish

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MS Excel

Tips & Tricks

7) Change Case of Text in Excel

One question I get all the time is how to change the case of text in Excel. Some applications
require case-specific text to make a match with its data. Or you may just want to clean up
your data to make it consistent across the document. Excel provides three quick formulas
to accomplish the text-case change we are talking about.

Type Excel training in Cell A1 like eXcEL tRAINING

In cell B1 type =PROPER(A1) will return Excel Training

In cell C1 type =UPPER(A1) will return

EXCEL TRAINING

In cell D1 type =LOWER(A1) will return

excel training

Its that easy. Just add this formula to an adjacent cell in Excel and watch your texts case be
instantly updated without manually changing each cell.
And finally you have to fix the data in the original column.
So copy the calculated column (column in which you have added formula)
Select the main column.
Then right click Paste Option / Values OR Ctrl Alt V -- Shortcut of Paste Special
Lastly delete or erase your formula column.

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MS Excel

Tips & Tricks

8) Protect worksheet - Protecting your data from modifying

To prevent a user from accidentally or deliberately changing, moving, or deleting important

data from a worksheet or workbook, you can protect certain worksheet or workbook
elements, with or without a password

Excel passwords can be up to 255 letters, numbers, spaces, and symbols. You must type
uppercase and lowercase letters correctly when you set and enter passwords.).

On the Review tab, in the Changes group, click Protect Sheet.

Ramzan Rajani Email: ramzanrajani@yahoo.com Web: ramzanrajani.com

MS Excel

Tips & Tricks

9) Protect workbook - Protecting your sheet from deletion

You can lock the structure of a workbook, which prevents users from adding or deleting
worksheets or from displaying hidden worksheets. You can also prevent users from
changing the size or position of worksheet windows. Workbook structure and window
protection applies to the whole workbook.

On the Review tab, in the Changes group, click Protect Workbook.

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MS Excel

Tips & Tricks

10) Protect your excel file with password while opening

By using the protection you can prevent user from opening your file

To protect your Excel 2010 spreadsheet, use the following steps.

In an open spreadsheet, click the File tab. The Backstage view opens.
In the Backstage view, click Info.
In Permissions, click Protect Workbook. The following options appear:

The following image is an example of the Protect Workbook options.

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MS Excel

Tips & Tricks

11) Pin Documents, Workbooks to the Recent File List in Excel

You can pin documents to the recent file list in Excel 2007 and above versions so that they
stay on the list and are easily found.

Steps in Excel 2007:

Select the Office button to see the list of Recent Documents.

Click the gray pin next to a document and the pin turns green and pins the
document to the list.
Its good for a document that you used frequently

Steps in Excel 2010:

Select the File menu then select Recent and you can see the recently used files &
folders. When you click a pin in either list, it turns blue AND moves to the top of the
list.

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MS Excel

Tips & Tricks

12) Compare 2 Excel Files using View side by side Mode

Many times we have 2 or more workbooks with same column heading but different data.
We want to compare both and see how they differ. Here you can you View side by side
mode in Excel.

If you enable Synchronous Scrolling both the documents will scroll together.

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MS Excel

Tips & Tricks

13) Working with several Excel files everyday?

Use workspace feature
If you work with multiple Excel workbooks every day, and have to open all the Excel files
daily to work on them, then here is a handy tip.
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.

Open all the files you frequently use together.

Arrange them (Horizontally / Vertically)
Go to View ribbon and click on Save Workspace (Save on Desktop)
Give a name to your workspace
Now, whenever you need to open all these files together, just double click on
workspace file which you have saved.
6. You are done!

Workspace saves not just file collection, but also window layouts.
That means, if you like to arrange your Excel windows in a specific fashion,
you can save this arrangement too.
However, it will not preserve the zoom. i.e., if you save the workbooks with different zoom
levels (75% for one, 85% for the second and 90% for the third) to show at the time of
opening. It will open with 100% zoom only.

Save a workspace no longer available in Excel 2013

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MS Excel

Tips & Tricks

14) Use Text Format to Preserve Leading Zeros in Excel

When you enter numbers like 00072 or 072.430 or 45.32400 in your Excel sheet, you would
see that Excel automatically removes starting zeros and trailing zeros (after decimal
point).However sometime, we want 00072, not 72. Then what?

Here is the quick method, use TEXT format instead of number format.
Select the cells where you are going to enter these numbers, from Home Ribbon>
Number area, select Text as cell type.
Excel will now treat any value you enter as Text, not as number.
So when you type 0072, it will appear as 0072, exactly same.

Calculation will not work as numbers are converted into the text

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MS Excel

Tips & Tricks

15) Use fixed number of zeros in the starting of number

If you want the number to show up in 6 digits (with leading 0s if needed),

you can use the cell format code 000000

Steps:
Select the cells in which you have numbers and press Ctrl 1
From Number tab choose Custom
Enter the format code as 000000

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MS Excel

Tips & Tricks

16) Shortcuts (Select/Insert/Delete/Hide& Unhide rows, cols & sheets)

Sr.

Action

Shortcut

Select Row

Shift Space

Select Column

Ctrl Space

Insert Row / Column

Ctrl +

Delete Row / Column

Ctrl -

Hide Row

Ctrl 9

Unhide Row

Ctrl Shift 9

Hide Column

Ctrl 0

Unhide Column

Ctrl Shift 0 (If now working, right click & unhide)

Insert Sheet

Shift F11

10

Delete Sheet

Alt H D S

11

Rename Sheet

Alt H O R

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MS Excel

Tips & Tricks

17) Quick Filtering

To filter unnecessary data in your columns so that you can better view the required
information only.

Select the cell in which you wish to filter.

Right click on that cell Filter Filter by Selected Cells value

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MS Excel

Tips & Tricks

18) Creating drop down in cells for Region / Country / City orTeam

Steps:
1) Select the cells where you wish to create the Drop downs.
2) Select Data Ribbon Data Validation Settings In Allow -- Select List
In Source either type Region names separated by commas or select the range in
which details are already typed.

Note:
If its excel 2010 and above then we can also select the drop down list data from another
sheet, else we have to create the named range if it's lower version.
After creating name range of the data, in Allow List, Source will be =region

Ctrl Shift F3 is the shortcut of creating Name Range

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MS Excel

Tips & Tricks

19) Shortcuts (Alignments / Borders / Sorting /Filtering / Hide/ Unhide Ribbons)

Sr.

Action

Shortcut

Align Left

Alt H A L

Align Right

Alt H A R

Align Center

Alt H A C

Align Top

Alt H A T

Align Middle

Alt H A M

Align Bottom

Alt H A B

Add Border

Alt H B A

Remove Border

Alt H B N

Outside Thick Border

Alt H B T

10

Sorting

Alt D S

11

Filtering

Ctrl Shift L

12

Hide / Unhide Ribbon

Ctrl F1

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MS Excel

Tips & Tricks

20) Removing extra spaces for the sentence (TRIM)

If you are importing data into MS Excel from other applications, you sometime get extra
spaces in the starting or ending of the word, how do you remove that quickly.
Use Trim function
Trim function removes all spaces from text except for single spaces between words.

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MS Excel

Tips & Tricks

Contact
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Thank you for your time. I hope you have learned something useful!
If you would like to plan Excel Advance training in your company,
feel free to write / call me on the above given details.
Ramzan Rajani is a corporate trainer & IT consultant serving local and international clients.
His depth of knowledge, unique style and personal touch creates high quality training impact.
He has extensive experience in creating templates, report automation, designing complex
Excel and Access applications as well as sophisticated Word documents, high end powerpoint
presentations & Excel Dashboards.
He has led hundreds of Microsoft Office corporate training sessions, from beginner to
advanced level, including Macros & Dashboard trainings across India, UAE (Dubai) &
North Africa.
In recognition he has received the Microsoft Office Specialist & Microsoft Certified Trainer
(MCT) certificates.
You can find a wide variety of Excel tips and tutorials from him on many websites

Ramzan Rajani Email: ramzanrajani@yahoo.com Web: ramzanrajani.com

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