The 3 Most Life-Changing Excel Tricks That You Can Put To Use Right Now

My friend’s girlfriend shared these Excel techniques with him over lunch, and he immediately proposed marriage to her. How will they change your life?

“Alt =” To Autosum

The “Alt=” shortcut (hold both down at once) is a nifty feature that helps you quickly sum the contiguous numbers arrayed in a column. Naturally you need to make sure that the above values that are auto-selected in the SUM function are in fact correct. Beyond that, just slam the Enter key and be on your way.

Zoom In Zoom Out

Working with an embarrassingly tall and wide spreadsheet? Who isn’t? To magnify and de-magnify your current area of suffering, I mean, focus, do the following:

To Magnify

Ctrl+Alt+PlusSign (held down all at once; repeat the PlusSign to keep zooming in)

To De-Magnify

Ctrl+Alt+MinusSign (held down all at once; repeat the MinusSign to keep zooming out)

Find and Select All Inputs At Once

Are you the lucky beneficiary of someone else’s enigmatic spreadsheet, that came with zero instructions? One of the most important things to sort out first is what are inputs and what are outputs. Sure, there may be a unique-color formatting convention apparently in place, but you need to confirm. You can select ALL numeric inputs on the page at ONCE with the following.

F5 > Special > Numbers that are constants, as shown below

The GIF shows 3 cells selected, one of which is formatted as an output, but is accidentally an input, and this group selection of inputs reveals the mistake quickly.

To the Community: I share these as a public service. I appreciate the fruit baskets, but please stop sending them. A man can only eat so many kiwis.