Favorite feature or tips / tricks you use in Excel

[Daniel Courtney]

General conversation starting question here.

I just wanted to gain a sense of any features or tactics that you employ in Excel that make the tool more powerful for you. For example I always like to make sure my rows and columns are distributed evenly both vertically and horizontally (when possible) to provide a clean view for anybody reading my data. I find this really makes it easier for consumers of my work to read whatever it is I am presenting. Another thing I always try to do is use hotkeys whenever possible. I consider it a personal failure when I have to use the mouse.

What are your favorite Excel tips or tricks?

[#2]

If it looks like a table, format as table.

[#3]

@Daniel Courtney , that https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00031305.2017.1375989 is recommended reading.

As for shortcuts/mouse I don't thing we shall avoid one or another, it depends on tasks. Reasonable combination works fine.

[#4]

@Sergei Baklan I agree on the kbd vs mouse debate; some things are pretty much undoable using just the keyboard. But many, many operations in Excel are way more efficient if you learn the keyboard short-cuts. My favorite one is control+1 to bring up the format dialog for any selected object in Excel.

[#5]

@Jan Karel Pieterse , yes, sure, shortcuts are quite efficient, especially for the routine and day-to-day operations. I'd only like to say what the approach only shortcuts or only mouse is not productive from my point of view.

As for my ones, first in mind and more often used, perhaps Ctrl+1 (of course), Ctrl+T, Ctrl+PgUp/PgDn, Ctrl+D, Ctrl+Shift+Up/Dn,... Majority of them are Ctrl+ or GrCtrl+, and I prefer mouse instead of something like Alt+A+B+C