Excel Tips and Tricks for Reporting
Excel is one of the best business reporting office tools out there, as long as you know how to use it adequately. Sometimes this can be a bit hard to do, which is why we created a list with some of the most important Excel tips and tricks for reporting that you can use right now.
Use Pivot Tables
PivotTables are designed to help you reorganise, analyse and explore the spreadsheet data enabling you to present your data. PivotTables let you easily view data from different angles. They will keep the data intact, but you can use them to sum up the values here, and you can even compare the information in the spreadsheet. It all comes down to what you need doing here, but there are some great summary functions to focus on here including Sum, Count, and Average.
Add More Than One New Row or Column
Select the number of rows or columns you want to add, right-click and choose Insert. This will automatically add the desired amount of columns or rows. It’s a very interesting tool to use and one that does bring in front some unique benefits and features for you to explore.
Remove Duplicates
Duplicates can be a huge issue if you have a lot of data. Select the column or row you want to remove duplicates from, then go to the Data Tab and select Remove Duplicates. It’s a very good and helpful tool that will make duplicate removal a breeze, and that’s surely helpful if you’re done trying to find duplicates manually.
Split the data in one cell to different cells
You can do that, and you need to select the data that you want to split at first. Go to Data and then select Text to Columns. The module will appear and here you can choose either Delimited or Fixed width. You will then have to select the delimiters. There’s even a preview to ensure that you get the right results.
Conditional Formatting
What makes the Conditional Formatting great is the fact that Excel allows you can change the cell colour based on what cell value is.
1) Just select your data range, in the example below cells B2:B10 are selected.
Select your range
2) On the Home tab, in the Styles group, click Conditional Formatting.
3) Click on, or hover over “Highlight Cells Rules”, then select “Greater Than”.
4) Enter the value 100 and select a formatting style. Click “OK”.
5) Excel highlights the cells that are greater than 100.
Highlighted cells after Conditional Formatting is applied
6) You can change the value in cell B7 to 200 and watch what happens!
7) Excel changes the colour format of the cell automatically.
You can apply many different rules, and the cell formatting will all be done automatically according to the rules that you just set.
VLOOKUP Function
The VLOOKUP Function allows you to look and search for information in your spreadsheet. The formula you have to use for this includes “=VLOOKUP(lookup value, table array, column number, [range lookup])”.
It’s always important to note that the right approach can be very helpful here. As long as you learn the right tips and tricks and adapt them adequately, results can be more than ok. But remember that some formulas may not work for you right away, and you can encounter some errors. You have to take your time and identify all the possible options here. It’s by far one of the best things to keep in mind, so you should consider that. In the end, using Excel formulas can be handy and helpful, all you have to do is to identify the right tools that you can use, and the outcome can be great!
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