Developing advanced Microsoft Excel skills and using different features within Excel can not only improve your efficiency within your career but also set you apart from your peers. Advanced Excel features such as how to analyze data, use Excel formulas, or the tools housed within the platform are underutilized by many but not by you.
Let’s discuss several advanced Microsoft Excel Skills that will make you use the platform like an expert! With these skills, you can improve your ability to complete tasks and perform better within your role. These are great skills to know for anybody to know and with practice, you too can become an expert.
Excel Skill #1: Sparkline
According to Microsoft, “A sparkline is a tiny chart in a worksheet cell that provides a visual representation of data. Use sparklines to show trends in a series of values, such as seasonal increases or decreases, economic cycles, or to highlight maximum and minimum values. Position a sparkline near its data for greatest impact.”
Add a Sparkline
- Select a blank cell at the end of a row of data.
- Select Insert and pick Sparkline type, like Line, or Column.
- Select cells in the row and OK in menu.
- More rows of data? Drag handle to add a Sparkline for each row.
Format a Sparkline chart
- Select the Sparkline chart.
- Select Design and then select an option.
- Select Line, Column, or Win/Lossto change the chart type.
- Check Markers to highlight individual values in the Sparkline chart.
- Select a Style for the Sparkline.
- Select Sparkline Color and the color.
- Select Sparkline Color > Weight to select the width of the Sparkline.
- SelectMarker Color to change the color of the markers.
- If the data has positive and negative values, select Axis to show the axis.
Excel Skill #2: Power Pivots
Power Pivot is an Excel add-in you can use to perform powerful data analysis and create sophisticated data models. With Power Pivot, you can mash up large volumes of data from various sources, perform information analysis rapidly, and share insights easily.
Excel Skill #3: Slicers
Slicers provide buttons that you can click to filter tables, or PivotTables. In addition to quick filtering, slicers also indicate the current filtering state, which makes it easy to understand what exactly is currently displayed.
Excel Skill #4: IFERROR
You can use the IFERROR function to trap and handle errors in a formula. IFERROR returns a value you specify if a formula evaluates to an error; otherwise, it returns the result of the formula.
Syntax
IFERROR(value, value_if_error)
The IFERROR function syntax has the following arguments:
- value The argument that is checked for an error.
- value_if_error The value to return if the formula evaluates to an error. The following error types are evaluated: #N/A, #VALUE!, #REF!, #DIV/0!, #NUM!, #NAME?, or #NULL!.
Remarks
- If value or value_if_error is an empty cell, IFERROR treats it as an empty string value (“”).
- If value is an array formula, IFERROR returns an array of results for each cell in the range specified in value. See the second example below.
Excel Skill #5: SUMIF
You use the SUMIF function to sum the values in a range that meet criteria that you specify. For example, suppose that in a column that contains numbers, you want to sum only the values that are larger than 5. You can use the following formula: =SUMIF(B2:B25,”>5″)
In Summary
If you found this useful, we are releasing a part two with additional advanced Microsoft Excel skills that will improve your ability to use Microsoft Excel for your needs.
Now, if you find that some of these skills are a little challenging and require too much time to learn, we are here for you.
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