MS Excel tips and tricks

Introduction

Even with tons of help files to Microsoft Excel it is still nice to keep a page with tips and tricks accumulated over the years. Everyone are more than welcome to add their favorite Excel tips and tricks on this page.

List of useful shortcut keys

Some shortcut keys can really speedup the way you are working with Excel, below is a list of some very useful Excel shortcut keys.

Key combination	Description	Version
F2	Edit the contents of a cell	All
Ctrl +	Add cells, columns or rows, depending on selection	All
Ctrl -	Delete cells, columns, or rows, depending on selection	All
Ctrl L	Convert an area to a table, Excel will suggest the area used if only one cell is selected	2007
Ctrl C	Copy selected cells	All
Ctrl Shift V	This will bring up the paste special menu, which allows you to paste as values, formulas, with formatting intact etc.	All
Ctrl Page Up	Move to the previous sheet in the workbook	All
Ctrl Page Down	Move to the next sheet in the workbook	All
Ctrl H	Search and replace dialog will be shown	All
Ctrl F	Search dialog will be shown	All

Tips and tricks

A fast way to convert text to numbers

If you have a cell, column, or row containing numbers represented as text, then here is a very fast way to convert text to number:

1. Select the cells you want to convert and copy them using Ctrl C
2. Open your favorite text editor (TextPad, UltraEdit, or Notepad++ to mention a few) and press Ctrl V
3. Notice how the values from the cells appear tab separated in the text document
4. Press Ctrl A to select the contents of the text document and Ctrl C to copy
5. Return to Excel, place the cell marker in the top left corner of your selected area and press Ctrl V
6. Any number that was previously represented as text will not appear as numbers

Notice that decimal numbers might cause some troubles depending on the localization you are using.