Looking at excel, one admits that it is indeed a revolutionary product and one that is too good to be true. It always seems like everything you need to be done or any mathematical equation you need to compute, can be done with excel. This product has traversed occupations, and regardless of one’s place in the workplace or occupation, the need to know or understand the workings of excel is quite inevitable. From journalists to engineers, excel has become a product whose use is unavoidable. Anytime you find yourself doing something manually in excel, then you are missing out on a trick or a formula. Excel has so many formulas and shortcuts and knowing they could be an added advantage for you, especially if you are looking to get employed in the future. Often, many students ignore excel and during class time prefer to get their minds and hands busy with other things. However, it is indeed essential that everyone learns how to work with excel because as already stated, its use traverses different occupations and courses as well. In other instances, excel skills can help you write a perfect essay the ones that require you to compute the data and draw graphs. This article is here to help you learn some helpful tips about excel.
10 Excel Tips for Students
Experts from Essay Zoo recommend the following tips for university students who seek to learn excel.
- Sorting and filtering data
- While examining data or large sets of data, it will be tedious to look row by row. You may, for example, want to look at data which fits into a certain pattern or criteria and this is where you need filters. Filters are typically added to every column, and this then makes it easy for you to select the cells you wish to view. When it comes to sorting, you can sort your rows alphabetically or input, whichever custom sort you wish to have. These are quite essential and will indeed be helpful to help you sort and arrange data the way you wish to see it.
- Computation formulas
- Excel also has a myriad of formulas which can help you do several computations. The formulas range from simple ones to complex ones, but you can choose the ones you need depends on what you are doing. In Excel, you will find summation formulas, average or mean formula, median, mode, min, max formulas, as well as the timestamp which will help you insert date and time.
- Pivot tables
- Pivot tables are quite useful in excel, and they are normally used to help organize data in whichever way you like. By using pivot tables, you can sum up data values or do a comparison of the information you have in your excel spreadsheet. Anything you do depends on what you like.
- Addition of rows and columns
- While using Excel to enter data or to do your daily computations, adding rows and columns is at times inevitable. However, adding one every time is quite tedious, but there is a feature in excel which helps you to add several or multiple rows and columns.
- Removal of duplicates
- Duplicate content can reduce the quality of your work and may even lead to wrong computations in the end. However, you are in luck because excel can help you remove duplicate data with a few steps. You simply need to highlight the columns or rows you wish to remove the duplicates from and then click “remove duplicates” which is under tools.
- Transpose
- You may have mistakenly named your rows, columns and vice versa, and you need a way to correct this mistake. Instead of going row by row copying the data and pasting it into the columns, you can simply use this transpose feature, and your spreadsheet will be set.
- Quick analysis
- Analysis of data takes time, and you can spend an entire day analyzing data on excel. However, the quick analysis feature helps you to analyze data quickly while also creating charts (both line and column), sparklines, etc. Additionally, you can also insert totals, apply PivotTables, conditional formatting, and different table styles.
- Autofill
- The autofill feature is also one that you can use to reduce the time you take to enter data into your spreadsheet. As you enter data, excel often notices some of the patterns that exist and automatically completes it for you.
- Use of the IF Statement
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- Yes, excel also helps you to do conditional computations. The IF statement is one conditional statement that is quite helpful and useful. For example, you may want to have certain information appear or to input certain information into a particular cell only when certain information appears in another cell you had specified. The IF statement is a function that will help you achieve this quest.
- Combining cells using the “&” sign
- Excel also makes it easy for you to combine cells which have different data. For example, you may have a column for first names and another for last names. By using the & sign, you can combine these two and create a new column with the heading full names. This feature is quite useful, and one should be prepared to learn it.
Wrap-up
In conclusion, excel is indeed one of the most important tools a person needs. It is not limited to computer gurus or accountants because anyone can find it useful. Therefore, do not waste your chance of learning excel when you have it.
