My Small World

Have you ever wondered the power of the key "Ctrl" while you are navigating in an excel worksheet or workbook...? The best accelerator key for navigation in excel is "Ctrl"... Move to the beginning of a row                  Ctrl + left arrow Move to the end of a row                          Ctrl + right arrow Move to the beginning of a column              Ctrl + up arrow Move to the end of a column                      Ctrl + down arrow Move to a different worksheets                   Ctrl + Page Up or Page Down Juggle between active workbooks                Ctrl + tab Move to the beginning of worksheet             Ctrl + home Isnt this is a p...

Intermediate to advance users of Excel may be quite familiar with the formula "Round()" where one can round off decimals. Microsoft offers something beyond decimals rounding off by this formula. The usual syntax for rounding off a number is "Round(#ref,1)" where #ref is the cell reference or the number to be rounded off and 1 is the number of decimal places the number needs to be rounded off i.e. if you want two digits after the decimal it should be 2, for one digit it should be 1 and no digits after decimal it should be 0. Have you ever tried using -ve number for rounding off...? Yes..! Using a negative number in the syntax will round of the number to the unit place you desire i.e. " Round(#ref,-1) ". Eg: You wish to round off 123456 to the nearest thousands so the formula would be "Round(123456,-3)" - Result: 123000!! This would be quite handy for the finance and sales people who need to quote rounded figures at various forums..!...

Oops... typed something in caps where you had to have in small case...?? Dont worry... Word provides the ease of using "Shift + F3". "Shift + F3" works in a toggle mode where one can toggle between  All CAPs All in lower case Title Case i.e. 1st letter in Caps and rest in lower case All can be just a word or a sentence or any selection. SO why WORRY... start USING "Shift + F3"...!

" Ctrl + + " (add rows or columns) and " Ctrl + - " (delete rows or columns) are the easy shortcuts one may remember while adding and deleting rows/columns in Microsoft Excel. Adding rows or columns: If you wish to add rows above the current cell... just press "shift + spacebar" (discussed in my earlier post) to select the current row and then press "Ctrl + +". It will insert a row over the current row. Press "Ctrl + +" repeatedly to insert as many rows. Similarly, "ctrl + spacebar" and then "Ctrl + +" adds a column before the current column. You may try pressing "Ctrl + +" without selecting a row or a column. In such a case, you may get a pop-up (as shown in the image) where you can choose an option of adding a row or a column. Deleting rows or columns: "shift + spacebar" followed by "Ctrl + -" deletes the selected row & "ctrl + spacebar" followed by "Ct...

Here are some keyboard shortcuts for some commonly used tasks. You may find it difficult to remember initially but gradually you would love to remember them. Format as currency with 2 decimal places CTRL + SHIFT + $ Format as percent with no decimal places CTRL + SHIFT + % Apply number format CTRL + SHIFT + ! Apply date format CTRL + SHIFT + # Apply time format CTRL + SHIFT + @ Apply general format CTRL + SHIFT + ~ Apply exponential number format CTRL + SHIFT + ^ Apply outline border to selection CTRL + SHIFT + ; Remove outline border to selection CTRL + SHIFT + _ Note: These shortcut will execute system default formating eg: if the default currency of the system is "$" the currency formated cell will bear "$". If you wish to apply any other formating other than t...

"Sum" formula is one of the widely used formula in Excel. I guess even a novice can do a "sum" calculation in excel. Microsoft offers an easy keyboard shortcut to the formula i.e. " Alt + = ". This command sums the list of values above the current cell. This is equivalent to the  in the standard toolbar in Excel. Isn't it easy??

The common answer to this post would be " Alt + Tab "... a popular windows shortcut. However, there's an easier way to navigate between multiple excel workbooks is " Ctrl + Tab " or " Ctrl + Shift + Tab ". " Alt + Tab " allows switching between all open windows irrespective of application but " Ctrl + Tab " offers the flexibility of switching between open excel files only without disturbing other open applications..! So when you are working on multiple excel files next time... you know which shortcut to use to navigate between open excel files...!  Ctrl + Tab " also help you to navigate between the tabs of any tabbed browser like IE7, Mozila Firefox, Chrome etc.. So now you can remember this more easily...!!