Posts tagged productivity
Microsoft Excel Shortcut Tweet Roundup w/c 19th September
Sep 23rd
Autumn is here and in between turning produce from the allotment and hedges of shropshire into soups, chutneys and other harvest delights I’m going to start back tweeting Excel shortcuts. Hopefully these shortcuts, along with other hints and tips I’ll blog / tweet about will give you some ideas as to how you can streamline your work and make Microsoft work for you. A roundup of tweets I’ve previously made is here, but this week I covered:
_____________________________________________________________________________________
Selects the entire active row SHIFT + SPACEBAR
Selects the entire active column CTRL + SPACEBAR
Undo! CTRL + Z (NB: Very handy and works across microsoft office programmes)
Redo CTRL + Y
Opens the format cells dialog box CTRL + 1
_____________________________________________________________________________________
Any suggestions for things that you would like to see then please do get in touch leaving a comment below.
Microsoft Excel Shortcut Tweet Roundup w/c 1st August
Aug 5th
This week’s shortcut tweets were
_____________________________________________________________________________________
Enter current date CTRL + ;
Open pivot table wizard ALT + D then P
Sort data ALT + D then S
Move between tabs in a workbook CTRL + PageUp or CTRL + PageDown
Open Spellcheck F7 NB: this works in other Microsoft Office products too, such as Word, Outlook and Powerpoint
_____________________________________________________________________________________
There will be more next week, but in the meantime what are your favourite shortcuts?
Microsoft Excel shortcut round up
Jul 29th
Periodically I post on twitter some handy keyboard shortcuts for Microsoft Excel. I am going to try and make this a more regular occurance with weekly roundups, so in case you’ve missed those I’ve tweeted so far, here they are:
_____________________________________________________________________________
Add a border around selected cells CTRL + SHIFT + &
Remove a border from selected cells CTRL + SHIFT + _
Add a comment to a cell SHIFT + F2
Hide a row CTRL + 9
Unhide a Row CTRL + SHIFT + (
Hide a column CTRL + 0
Unhide a Column CTRL + SHIFT + ) NB: if you’re using Windows Vista or Windows 7 this probably won’t work. See here for why and a way to get around this
Convert selected cell to a currency format CTRL+SHIFT+$ NB: this coverts to the default regional setting, so if you’ve UK settings will be £ despite the $ used in the shortcut!
_____________________________________________________________________________
I hope you find these useful, I’ll continue to post them regularly but what’s your most used keyboard shortcut? Let me know in the comments below.
Efficiency – saving time is saving money
Jul 11th
By working with you to review your business processes, improve your spreadsheets and provide a more streamlined workflow I can help make you more efficient. Don’t switch off, this really is important stuff – there’s never been a more important time to be working as efficiently and as effectively as you can. Being more efficient might not seem on the face of it to be as important as bringing in the money but time is money said Benjamin Franklin.
Let’s put it another way, if I can save you just a minute on a task that you do twice a day, then over the course of the year that will have saved you a whole working day. All those wasted seconds moving between spreadsheets, retyping in data or copying and pasting may not seem like much but they add up and eat into your core business activity, whatever that might be.
Recently I’ve done some Excel detective work with a client, helping them to improve a process that typically took around 3 hours a month. By making some changes to the spreadsheet and ensuring that they understood a few particular excel commands we’ve dropped that to just 15 minutes. Apart from the fact that they were now no longer dreading the task the time saving is around 4 ½ days a year.
If time is money, what’s your hourly rate? Can you afford for your staff to be spending time unnecessarily on tasks which could be done quicker and more effectively? I’m happy to come in and take a look at your processes, spreadsheets that you use and how they interact with other Microsoft products and your other software and take a look to see if I can help save you money.
A good friend (Leighton, from Maison Jaune) pointed me in the direction of a recent blog post from Seth Godin, a well known American entrepreneur. It’s a short blog post and is on exactly this topic. You can read it here – and then, back to work. Time is money don’t forget…
Spreadsheet Problems and Errors
May 18th
There’s been an interesting discussion in one of my LinkedIn groups about this article in the Financial Times on errors in spreadsheets. Although some years old the article talks about research from the University of Hawaii showing that
“between 78 and 97 per cent of spreadsheets contain “serious material errors” with a potential to devastate the bottom line.”
I wonder, did they use a spread sheet to collate that figure?
In my view it’s the very aspects of Excel that make it so widely used that can lead to problems. It’s the flexibility, the speed in which fairly complex calculations can be done, its accessibility and widespread use. At its best it’s an incredibly powerful tool which shouldn’t be underestimated. I’d say that careless use of business critical spreadsheets is analogous to putting a young inexperienced driver in control of a new, more powerful car and telling them to rely on that car to get around. Whilst they may not have a terrible crash, a minor bump or scratch somewhere along the line is likely unless that driver is given the time and support to get to know and understand the vehicle, along with a good set of documentation for backup.
But don’t panic, of course you shouldn’t abandon Excel entirely! Yes many organisations rely on complex and unstable spreadsheets when there are more appropriate Business Intelligence solutions however Excel can also enhance your business giving you the management information you need in a format and style that suits you. It’s particularly suitable for SMEs, freelancers and micro businesses, helping them working more efficiently and effectively understanding their business. Management Information, KPI reporting, Business Intelligence and Data Analysis may seem complex terms but shouldn’t be reserved for large corporate customers, every business needs to be able to lay their hands on their key data and Excel can help you do that. A properly constructed spreadsheet should be an asset to your business and Excel should never be a burden to be endured!
In coming blog posts I’ll cover various spreadsheet tools and some suggestions of best practice when designing a new workbook which can be used to help you avoid problems, but in the meantime what’s the biggest problem a spreadsheet has ever caused you?