5 Ways to Work Efficiently in Excel

You would love to get that promotion, or maybe you are in search of that elusive raise. Maybe you simply want to secure your job in this down economic time. But whatever the reason, you're looking for ways to impress your supervisor.

Why not consider Excel? This spreadsheet program might appear to be just a simple, albeit essential, business tool, but the truth is there are several lesser-known Excel tricks that enable you to work more efficiently.

• Hiding Information: There could be an occasion when you want to hide certain data when printing an Excel spreadsheet. For instance, maybe your spreadsheet contains confidential salary information. Luckily, you can tell Excel not to print certain rows or columns by hiding them before you hit print. To hide rows or columns, click the corresponding number or letter then right-click on a highlighted row or column and click the Hide option. You can then choose the Unhide option to bring these columns and rows back into view.
• Timestamping: You can attach a fixed date and time to your Excel spreadsheets with your computer's "Ctrl" key. To do this, hold Ctrl while you press the semicolon key. For the current date and time just hold down the Ctrl and Shift keys while pressing the semicolon.
• A Better-Looking Spreadsheet: Perk up your spreadsheet by utilizing Excel’s Themes option. This is found at the top on the Excel Ribbon. This aspect gives you a large variety of color schemes and fonts, or you could create your own and apply it to your spreadsheet.
• Tracking Trends: This is known as Sparklines and is only available in the latest version of Excel. It allows you to create charts that relate trends in the data within your spreadsheet. This may be helpful, for example, if you need to quickly see how many software bundles your company’s salespeople sold in the first half of last year.
• Conditional Formatting: With conditional formatting, you can instantly customize the look of spreadsheet cells that meet certain criteria. For instance, a cell showing that product sales rose by more than 100 % in a given month might take on a different shade so that it quickly stands out.