Customizations that really save time.
We all know that when you hit enter on a cell excel usually takes you to the next cell in that column for editing. But what if you need to go to next cell in that row? Of course you can use tab. But you can also customize the cell edit order when you are typing out that large list of entries so that you need not change your habits for the software. Just go to Menu > Tools > Options > Edit tab and set the “move selection after enter” to whatever direction you like.
Whenever you open a new workbook, excel shows 3 spreadsheets by default. Most of the times we need one or two of them. And when we are sharing the project plan or sales report (or whatever else the excel file has) with colleagues, we remove the other 2 sheets. You can save the trouble by telling excel to create only one sheet by default and let you add more if you need it. In Menu > Tools > Options > General Tab change the “sheets in new workbook” from 3 to 1.
Each one of us have our own favorite fonts. I like Verdana better than Arial. May be you like Georgia compared to Arial. But when you set out to create that gantt chart for your new project you have to manually change the font from Arial to Georgia everytime. No longer. Tell excel to change the default font from Arial to your favorite. In Menu > Tools > Options > General Tab set the “Standard font” to what you like. You can set the font size as well.
Excel has few built-in lists that it uses for auto-filling cells when you drag that little pointer across. For eg. you can write Monday in 1st cell, Tuesday in 2nd cell and select these two and drag that over the next few cells by clicking in the corner and excel would fill rest of the weekdays in that range. This is a very useful feature. But what if you do repetitive typing your company products or annual holidays ? Of course you can tell excel to use your own lists for auto-fills. Just go to Menu > Tools > Options > Custom Lists and add your own lists by typing them or pointing to a location where they are.
Excel (2003 and earlier) has a limitation of 56 colors. We all have been living with that for a while now. But what if you need to tweak the colors to suit your company’s color scheme without spending too much time on it. Simple. Just change the colors for the current workbook by going to Menu > Tools > Options > Color and define your own RGB values for each of the colors. Alternative you can try this hack to get more colors in your charts.
Excel’s number formatting is pretty intelligent. It can get your country locale information from the system you are using and thus format the numbers (the thousands separators symbol and decimal point symbol) based on that. This is a very useful feature since you dont have to worry how the numbers are shown. But what if you are in US but your reports needs to show numbers according to some other country’s format? You can change the thousands separator and decimal point symbols to suit your preference. In the Menu > Tools > Options > International Tab, uncheck the “use system separators” and enter your own.
Excel’s formula error checking options are both useful and annoying. For eg. Excel would tell me if there is an “inconsistent formula in region”. Very useful feature to spot omissions. But what if you already know what you are doing and you need to omit few cells in that region in that formula? Still excel would bug you to correct that error. It may be better to turn off this error checking option that silence it every time. Go to Menu > Tools > Options > Error Checking Tab and uncheck error checking rules that you don’t want excel to apply.
We have come to rely on features like spell check, undo, auto correct so much that our productivity would drop 50% if these features were to vanish tomorrow. But do you know that you can use auto-correct feature to be even more productive? You can set your own auto correct rules in Excel (Word, PowerPoint as well) and this little tweak can help you reduce typing. For eg. while writing blog posts I often write PHD to convey Pointy Haired Dilbert. Instead of actually typing Pointy Haired Dilbert every time, I can define an auto-correct rule that says replace PHD with Pointy Haired Dilbert. Imagine how much of typing you can reduce by definin