Shortcut keys can save you a lot of time in Microsoft Excel; instead of going through all the settings you can just press a few buttons. Here are 10 useful command shortcut keys. 
 
Ctrl + A – Select all contents on the worksheet

Ctrl + B – Bold highlighted selection

Ctrl + I – Italic highlighted selection

Ctrl + K – Insert Link

Ctrl + U – Underline highlighted selection

Ctrl + 5 – Strikethrough highlighted selection

Ctrl + P – Open print dialog box

Ctrl + Z – Undo last action

Ctrl + F9 – Minimize current window

Ctrl + F10 – Maximize current window
 
Have a look at our Microsoft Excel Tips page for more useful information

If you want to add or remove commands or customize the Quick Access Toolbar in Microsoft Excel, just follow these simple steps:

 
1. Right click on the Ribbon 
2. From the Menu, click on Customize Quick Access Toolbar
3. This opens up the customized options box
4. In the left column are the commands that are available, on the right are the commands that are on the toolbar
5. Select the Command you want to insert or to remove
6. Click on Add or Remove to add or remove it from the Toolbar
7. Click OK

 
Interested in learning more? Have a look at our Microsoft Excel Tips Page

It is extremely annoying when you want to print out a worksheet in Excel and it can’t quite fit the whole sheet on one page. So it ends up spilling a small section over onto another page and wasting paper.
 
Excel has a handy scaling feature that allows you to specify how many pages you want your print out to occupy. You set the page dimensions, and Excel can shrink everything down so it fits in the specified area:

 
1. Set up your worksheet as desired.
2. Choose Page Setup from the File menu to get the Dialog Box.
3. Make sure the Page tab is selected.
4. Select the Fit To option and specify how many pages you want the printout to use.
5. Click on OK.
6. Print your worksheet as normal.

Do you want to learn more tips? Just visit out Microsoft Excel Tips page

Have you ever wanted to change your graphs in Excel to make them more colourful or even make them 3D? With Excel 2007 you are able to choose from a huge range of graphs with all sorts of designs. But make sure that the chosen graph will be able to display your results clearly.
 

If you do not know how to create in Excel read How to create a chart article 
 

Once you’ve created a chart here’s how to modify it:

 
1. Select the Graph/ Chart you’ve created. It will display 3 additional tabs – Design, Layout and Format.

 

2. Select the Chart Styles icon (red circle) on the Design Tab from Ribbon. It gives you a wide range of different styles, including 3D graphs.

 

3. There is also a Change Chart Type option (green circle) where you can change the graph to e.g. a pie chart.

 

4. When you choose a new Chart Layout from the gallery, you get a predefined combination of title, layout, gridlines, and so on.

 
Interested in learning more? Then book yourself on one of our Microsoft Excel Courses

When you use Excel the table can look really boring and plain; however in the newer versions (2007  and 2010) you are able to customize your tables by using different font styles and colours as well. There are also different shades of colour and sizes of text you can use. To change you table here’s how to do it:

1. Click on the Cell Styles link on the toolbar
   (highlighted in image)

 

2. This will give you a list of all the different styles that are available to you when making your table

 

3. Click on the cell you want to personalize and then choose the style you want.

Want more tips; just visit our Microsoft Excel Tips page

Welcome to another Microsoft Excel tip. In this tip, I will explain how you can use the AutoSum function in Excel to quickly and easily add up a column of numbers.

This tip can save you bundles of time, especially if you are working with a lot of numerical data with the use of one button or a keyboard shortcut, depending on your preference.

The keyboard shortcut for the AutoSum function is: Alt + =

The button that works the AutoSum function is this button:

To use AutoSum, you must click in the cell that you wish your result, or addition to appear in.  As a default, AutoSum looks up a column for figures immediately above it to add together.  This works great, unless it encounters a blank row or text.  If it does, then it stops at the last cell with a number in it. 

If there are no numbers above it, AutoSum will automatically go to the left looking for numbers to add up, but will again stop at a blank column or text.   This is Excel’s default, but you can easily change it.

If you would like more tips about Excel, visit our Microsoft Excel Tips page.

If you would like to learn more about Microsoft Excel, you ought to book yourself on one of our Microsoft Excel Training Courses.

If you are a regular user of Excel, there is a good chance that you already have a number of Macros to help you with making every day tasks much quicker and simpler.

There is a way in which you can make it even more streamlined to use by adding the Macros to the toolbars for easier access. To add the Macros to the toolbar, follow these simple steps:

1. Choose Customize from the Tools menu. Excel displays the Customize dialog box.
2. Make sure the Toolbars tab is selected. In the list of toolbars, make sure there is a check mark beside the toolbar to which you want your macro added. The check mark ensures that the toolbar is displayed on the screen.
3. Click on the Commands tab.
4. In the list of Categories, choose the Macros entry. Your macros should then appear in the Commands list.
5. In the Commands list, select the macro you want assigned to a toolbar.
6. Using the mouse, drag the macro from the Commands list to the location on the toolbar where you want it to appear.
7. When you drop the macro, it appears on the toolbar.

If you wish to add more macros, repeat steps 6 through 8.

If you would like to read more Excel tips, visit our Microsoft Excel Tips page.

If you would like to learn more about Microsoft Excel, then you should book yourself on one of our Microsoft Excel Training Courses.

Welcome to our latest Microsoft Excel Tip. This tip will be gold to those who work with a split sheet or have a couple of worksheets open in different windows. Are you tired of each time you open Excel, you have to spend time arranging your worksheets before you start working? Then read on, this tip is the answer you have been looking for.

Once you have split your sheet or have organised and arrange the multiple sheets you use, follow these simple steps to save the view in Microsoft Excel 2007 & 2010.

1. Click the View Tab and select Save Workspace in the Window group.
2. Save the view as an XLW file. This should be the default file type anyway and then just name the file and click Save.

The next time that you work with this workbook, instead of opening the XLSX version of the file, open the XLW version. Excel will open the same workbook with all sheets intact, but it will just open to the view you work with most.

If you would more handy Excel Tips, feel free to visit our Microsoft Excel Tips page.

If you would like to learn more about Excel, then book yourself on one of our Microsoft Excel Training Courses.

Welcome to another Microsoft Excel Tip. This tip will aid those who are currently using the 2010 version of Microsoft Excel.

Have you ever wanted to view the formulas in your spreadsheets instead of the results? Well now there are a couple of ways to do this, one involving a single key on the keyboard whereas the other takes a little more time. Below I will tell you both ways on how to do this and you can choose for yourself which you prefer.

The quickest and simplest method to achieve the showing of formulas rather than results is use a two-key keyboard shortcut: Ctrl & the tilde key. For those unfamiliar with the tilde key, it is the ~ key above the large Shift key.

The second, slightly more time consuming way consists of the following steps:

1. Open the File menu, select Options and click Advanced.
2. Scroll down to Display Options for this Worksheet and check the box beside the option: Show Formulas in Cells instead of their calculated results.
3. If you wish to see the results again, just uncheck the box.

If you would like more tips, feel free to visit our Microsoft Excel Tips pages.

If you would like to learn more about Excel, then you should book yourself on one of our Microsoft Excel Training Courses.

In our previous article, we showed you how you can receive a notification from Excel a number of days in advance of a task’s due date using Conditional Formatting.

In this tip, we will tell you how you can achieve the same notification; however this time it will be achieved by using the IF function in the next cell. Using this option, the cell will only display dates between the start date and 30 days after the start date.

Here are the steps to follow:

1)      Select cell next to date

2)      Insert IF function with following parameters:

(i)      in Logical_test field enter cell reference  to compare if date is greater than or equal to today’s date (C2>=TODAY());

(ii)    in Value_if_true field enter nested if to compare if date to be compared is less than today’s date plus 30 days;

(iii)   in Value_if_false enter “” or value of your choice.
Example.: =IF(C2>=TODAY(),IF(C2<=TODAY()+30,C2,”"),”")

3)      Click OK

4)      Copy formula to the rest of cells

If you would like to read some more Excel tips, visit our Microsoft Excel Tips page.

If you would like to learn more about Microsoft Excel, you should book yourself on one of our Microsoft Excel Training Courses.