You may wish to impress your boss because you want a promotion, or a raise, or you just want to differentiate yourself from the crowd. Whatever the purpose, the first question is how?
What about Excel? The majority of us, despite our job, use spreadsheets in Excel. This program is a very powerful business tool; here are some tips to boost your efficiency, which is certain to impress your boss.
- Hiding Information: Did you know that you can hide columns, instead of deleteing them, when printing a spreadsheet? This can be useful, for example, if the spreadsheet has confidential information such as salary. In order to hide rows or columns, select the associated number or letter of the row or column to highlight it, then right-click on the highlighted row or column and choose the Hide option. You are able to Unhide a row or column in the same manner once you have printed or exhibited your spreadsheet.
- 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 merely hold down the Ctrl and Shift keys while pressing the semicolon.
- A Better-Looking Spreadsheet: Give your spreadsheet a fresh look by using Excel’s Themes option. You will find this in the Excel Ribbon, at the top. Click it, and you’ll be given a huge variety of fonts, and color schemes that you can apply to your spreadsheet. It’s also possible to create your own!
- Tracking Trends: The latest version of Excel comes with a feature called Sparklines. By employing this feature, you can create small charts that show trends in information. For instance, you might use Sparklines to instantly figure out how many software bundles each of your company’s salespeople sold in the first half of 2011.
- Conditional Formatting: This lets you format only specific cells, you can decide on a criteria, and any cells that fall within it will be a certain color. This feature will be helpful to get a quick visual read of your spreadsheet.