Software like Microsoft Excel is hard to master, but you will be a pro with these tips. Spreadsheets are notorious for causing frustration. They can become tedious and hard-to-read monsters that take hours to navigate. By working on your Excel skills, you will save yourself time and headaches.

Don’t Let Writing in a Spreadsheet Stress You Out

A huge problem with writing information in Microsoft Excel is if it is too large, the text will seemingly disappear. However, if you extend the block, the text appears. By clicking on the Wrap Text button or by pressing Alt + Enter. If you are familiar with Microsoft Word, this wrapping text is a familiar format.

Your Filling Options in Excel

Microsoft programs are designed to be intuitive. Many benefits of using Microsoft Excel are that it will suggest things to you if it catches on to a pattern. Fill Series are how Excel can fill up a column or row. The fill series button will appear at the lower-right of whatever column or row you are inputting data into. This works best with information that is already in another column. For example, a list of patients or employees may have first and last names held in separate columns. The fill series available to you in the next column could be the first and last names put together if you start the column by doing that. Excel will see the pattern and may suggest it to you in light grey font.

Navigating the Spreadsheet

It can feel tedious to click on each cell you want to interact with. Even moving around with the arrow keys can become annoying if you deal with spreadsheets all day. Especially for huge spreadsheets with hundreds or thousands of rows and columns. A shortcut for traveling across the spreadsheet is pressing CTRL + Shift, then hit the left, right, down, or up arrow keys to navigate. This will take you to the end of that column or row. Press the up key to select all the cells above where you started. Combining the directions allows you to select everything in the square without dragging your cursor across thousands of cells. 

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