Monday, March 5,  2001		Article

Tips for Microsoft Excel
By Vipul Verma

MICROSOFT Excel (MS Excel) is a. versatile and extremely useful part of MS Office. However, a majority of persons are not able to make full use of this program, as they are not aware of either its full features or uses. Using some important tips and tricks can add a lot of value to Excel.

MS Excel uses spread sheets of which a cell is the smallest unit. Actually these cells are complete units in themselves as user can enter independent information/data in these cells and perform numerous functions. You can link them with some external resource or link them with other cells by defining a command in these cells. These commands could be used to perform multiple functions and could be added easily by right clicking on the cell and from the pop-up menu, selecting the Insert Comment command. Thus, using this procedure you can insert or edit any command directly in a cell.

In case of Excel you can enter as much data you want in a cell. However, it has to be in continuation and could be separated by space. But if you press "Enter" key anywhere, then the cursor will automatically move to the next cell. Thus if you are entering addresses in individual cells, you may encounter this problem. However, by using a simple tip, this problem could be overcome. Thus if you want to enter a 5-line address within a single cell, you can do this by entering Alt+Enter, at the end of each line, instead of pressing Enter.

Excel is actually a user-friendly program and provides enough flexibility also. Thus, any time you want you can add or delete any number of rows or columns in your worksheet. Addition or deletion is irrespective of whether the rows or columns contain data or not. You can also add a row or column in between the database. The procedure for inserting the rows or columns is simple. To insert a row or column select a row or column, then right click on the row or column to display a pop-up menu. From the pop-up menu, either select Insert Row or Insert Column. This way, wherever you place your cursor, a row would be added below it and if you select to add the column, a column would be added to the right of it. You can also delete the row or column in a similar fashion.

However, there may be a situation, when you may like to simply hide a row or column instead of deleting it from your worksheet. Thus to hide a row or column, select a row or column. Then right click on the row or column to display a pop-up menu. From the pop-up menu, select Hide.

Normally, MS Excel uses voluminous data, and thus often it could be difficult to find out some information required. However, using a simple tip you can find out any information you want easily. Thus to find a file containing a particular piece of text, simply choose Open to display the Open dialog box from the File menu, then to search the current folder for a file containing a particular piece of text, enter the particular text into the Text or Property box and then click on the Find Now button. However, since the information is stored in individual cells, so the number of cells, where information is loaded could be large. Thus if you wish to select a limited number of cells together then using a simple tip you can do it easily. Click on the first cell that you wish to select and with the Control key depressed click on the other cells that you wish to select. This will select a range of cells you wish to select. Alternatively, if you wish to select the entire range of cells in your work sheet, then you can do so by holding down the Ctrl key in combination with A.

At times the data selected in a single sheet is bigger than the normal size of the page and thus if the requirement is such that it is to be viewed on one single page, you can do so. To fit data on a single page, from the File menu choose Page setup and on the page tab choose fit to. Specify the width and length of the printout. This will shrink or stretch your data.

Working in MS Excel at times involves navigation either in multiple worksheets or workbooks or even between other Microsoft applications like Word etc. Thus in such cases you can ease the work by using the hyperlink (Globe and broken chain on the "Standard" toolbar). You can attach a link to an empty cell, a datum in a cell, any image, "WordArt" object or elements offered on the "Design" toolbar. For doing so, select the object or the cell, then click on the "Globe" and create the external or internal link.

If your work is spread in a number of sheets in the same workbooks, then moving around in the worksheets is not so easy. However, using a simple trick, moving from one sheet to another could be easy. Simply right click on the set of arrows in the lower left corner of the screen and you will find the complete list of the sheets in your workbook. Just click on the name of the sheet you want to move and you will be able to access that sheet directly. This tip could prove useful in case you have to copy and paste a lot of data from one sheet to another, as you can directly jump to the sheet, where you wish to paste the data. Moreover you can make the task of moving around in the sheets even easier if you arrange your sheets in alphabetical order.