MS-Excel
What is Microsoft Excel?
Microsoft Excel is a popular spreadsheet software program for business. It’s used for data entry and management, charts and graphs, and project management. You can format, organize, visualize, and calculate data with this tool.
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How to Download Microsoft Excel
It’s easy to download Microsoft Excel. First, check to make sure that your PC or Mac meets Microsoft’s system requirements. Next, sign in and install Microsoft 365.
After you sign in, follow the steps for your account and computer system to download and launch the program.
For example, say you’re working on a Mac desktop. You’ll click on Launchpad or look in your applications folder. Then, click on the Excel icon to open the application.
Microsoft Excel Spreadsheet Basics
Sometimes, Excel seems too good to be true. Need to combine data in multiple cells? Excel can do it. Need to copy formatting across an array of cells? Excel can do that, too.
Let’s start this Excel guide with the basics. Once you have these functions down, you’ll be ready to tackle more pro Excel tips and advanced lessons.
Inserting Rows or Columns
As you work with data, you might find yourself needing to add more rows and columns. Doing this one at a time would be super tedious. Luckily, there’s an easier way.
To add multiple rows or columns in a spreadsheet, highlight the number of pre-existing rows or columns that you want to add. Then, right-click and select “Insert.”
In this example, I add three rows to the top of my spreadsheet.
Microsoft Excel basics: Inserting Rows or Colum Auto fill lets you quickly fill adjacent cells with several types of data, including values, series, and formulas.
There are many ways to deploy this feature, but the fill handle is among the easiest.
Microsoft Excel basics: Auto fill
First, choose the cells you want to be the source. Next, find the fill handle in the lower-right corner of the cell. Then either drag the fill handle to cover the cells you want to fill or just double-click.
Tired of struggling with spreadsheets? These free Microsoft Excel templates can help.
Get the Templates Excel templates
Filters
When you’re looking at large data sets, you usually don’t need to look at every row at the same time. Sometimes, you only want to look at data that fit into certain criteria. That’s where filters come in.
Filters allow you to pare down data to only see certain rows at one time. In Excel, you can add a filter to each column in your data. From there, you can choose which cells you want to view.
To add a filter, click the Data tab and select “Filter.” Next, click the arrow next to the column headers. This lets you choose whether you want to organize your data in ascending or descending order, as well as which rows you want to show.
Let’s take a look at the Harry Potter example below. Say you only want to see the students in Gry ffindor. By selecting the Gryf findor filter, the other rows disappear.
Microsoft Excel basics: Filters
Pro tip: Start with a filtered view in your original spreadsheet. Then, copy and paste the values to another spreadsheet before you start analyzing.
Sort
Sometimes you’ll have a disorganized list of data. This is typical when you’re exporting lists, like marketing contacts or blog posts. Excel’s sort feature can help you alphabetize any list.
Click on the data in the column you want to sort. Then click on the “Data” tab in your toolbar and look for the “Sort” option on the left.
If the “A” is on top of the “Z,” you can just click on that button once. Choosing A-Z means the list will sort in alphabetical order.
If the “Z” is on top of the “A,” click the button twice. Z-A selection means the list will sort in reverse alphabetical order.
Remove Duplicates
Large datasets tend to have duplicate content. For example, you may have a list of different company contacts, but you only want to see the number of companies you have. In situations like this, removing duplicates comes in handy.
To remove duplicates, highlight the row or column where you noticed duplicate data. Then, go to the Data tab, and select “Remove Duplicates” (under Tools). A pop-up will appear so that you can confirm which data you want to keep. Select “Remove Duplicates,” and you’re good to go.
Microsoft Excel basics: Remove Duplicates
If you want to see an example, this post offers step-by-step instructions for removing duplicates.
You can also use this feature to remove an entire row based on a duplicate column value. So, say you have three rows of information and you only need to see one, you can select the whole dataset and then remove duplicates. The resulting list will have only unique data without any duplicates.
Paste Special
It’s often helpful to change the items in a row of data into a column (or vice versa). It would take a lot of time to copy and paste each individual header.
Not to mention, you may easily fall into one of the biggest, most unfortunate Excel traps — human error. Read here to check out some of the most common Microsoft Excel errors.
Instead of making one of these errors, let Excel do the work for you. Take a look at this example:
Microsoft Excel basics: Paste Special
To use this function, highlight the column or row you want to transpose. Then, right-click and select “Copy.”
Next, select the cells where you want the first row or column to begin. Right-click on the cell, and then select “Paste Special.”
When the module appears, choose the option to transpose.
Paste Special is a super useful function. In the module, you can also choose between copying formulas, values, formats, or even column widths. This is especially helpful when it comes to copying the results of your pivot table into a chart.