Beginner Excel Tricks

Excel Tricks

We'll take a look at a way that you can repeat a command that you just applied, how you can copy multiple formats over to other cells, inserting comments into your spreadsheet. These will show up as little Post-it notes when you hover your mouse over the cell inserting links.

Perhaps I want to link to a Web site. All I have to do is enter the text, create a link to the site I want to go to, and people will be able to click that link and go directly to the Web site. Finally, we'll take a look at how to insert screenshots in your spreadsheet without using a third party application. So let's get started. I'm going to go over to this cell that contains some text. I want to be able to format the text in such a way that there's a yellow background feel to it. So on the home tab, I will head over to the font group and if my cutter color is not already selected, I will click the dropdown and choose the color that I want. Now my colors are already there. I'll simply click on the yellow fill and that applies the format. Now I need to do this as well for the text underneath, but I'm not going to need to go back up to the font group in the ribbon.

F4 Repeat

All I will need to do is simply press the keyboard shortcut F4 that repeats the last action that I just took. Now I want to change this font size to 14. I'll just use the increase font size command. Now I want to be able to repeat that action with the cell underneath. I'll simply press for it.

Indenting

Now I want to increase the indent for this cell. I'll go over to the alignment group and increase the indent by pressing the increase indent button. Next time I need to do this, I'm not going to maneuver my mouse back up to the alignment group. I'll simply press F for and that repeats the last action. So that's how you can use that keyboard shortcut to repeat some very common formatting options. This may not work with all the commands that you perform in Excel, but most of the formatting options will work. Format painter. This is a little different. This cell has multiple formats that have already been applied. I'm not going to be able to press F4 and apply all of them.

So as an alternative, I'll select this cell. I'll head over to the home tab and over in the clipboard group I will see format painter. What format painter will do is it'll copy. All the formats have already been applied to a cell. When I bring my mouse back into the spreadsheet, the cursor is going to look different. I'm going to see a little paintbrush there. And so the analogy is imagining that you took a paintbrush and you put it into a paint bucket and now you're gonna paint over other cells with that same color. Here it's multiple formats and with one click. I've applied all three formats to this cell. That's the border that's a little dashed.

Also the purple formatting for the text and the peach background color. Now, I would like to apply that same format to this so now I could potentially click F4. But let me show you something else. If I double click on format painter that locks it into position. This allows me. I double-clicked more than two times, so I'll do it again. Double click when I see that that is shaded in. Now I'm able to go and click on multiple cells and apply that same format multiple times when I'm done and I want the cursor to go back to the way that it was.

All I have to do is either press escape or go back and click on format painter. And then notice it's not gray anymore.

Insert Comments

Now I have my regular cursor inserting comments, I might want to insert a comment in a cell. Now I have the latest version of Excel, which is twenty nineteen. So when I head over to the review tab, comments are different in twenty nineteen. If you have a version of either 2013 or 2016, then your version of comments is actually notes in 2019. So if you're using 2013 2016, I would choose new comment and you will get something that looks like this. Then here you can go in and depending on your username, you can go in and type in a new comment. I'm going to say this is a comment when I click outside of the cell. I don't see the comment, but I will see it when I hover my mouse over that cell.

So this is a great way to leave notes for yourself, for certain formulas that you create without having to worry about those notes taking up space.

Insert Links

The keyboard shortcut to also do the same thing is shift F to inserting links. I want to create a link to Microsoft's Web site. So what I'm going to do is type Microsoft. Microsoft's Web site Press Enter and now for that text, I would like to insert a hyperlink. I can do this by going to insert heading over to the links group and choosing link. This opens up a dialog box where I can now into an address, a Web site address that I'm gonna be able to go to when I click on the text. Microsoft's Web site, the keyboard shortcut to do the same thing is Control K and you'll just think of the last letter in the word hyperlink. Now, what I'm going to do here is type in W W W dot as soon as I hit the dot. I'm able to see that the dialog box automatically puts in HTTP colon slash slash for me. Now I'm going to type in Microsoft's web site, my crew soft dot com and then I'll click ok. Now the text to display is not w w dot microsoft.com. It's actually Microsoft's Web site. So I'll keep that text intact unless I change text to display.

Now I can maneuver my mouse over that cell and it says click once and then I will be able to go to Microsoft's Web site. I'm going to click here. Now, my pages, my browser is opened up on my second monitor. I'll bring that page back into here. And this is the site that shows up when I click on that link. I'm going to close this.

Inserting Screenshots

And now let's take a look at our last tip. Inserting screenshots, I would like to insert a screenshot of another Web page or another application. Maybe I'm doing a tutorial. So let me go to the Microsoft Web site, actually, and I'm going to bring this back in to view. And I'm going to go and search for being image search. And I'm going to go to images and I'm going to actually that's perfect. Now I'm going to go back to my spreadsheet. And what I would like to do is take a screenshot of the page I was just on. So I'll go to insert, I'll head over to screenshot.

Then I want to choose the option called screen clipping. Once I click that link, I will just have to be a little patient. And now this is what I'm looking for. The screen has ghosted over and I have crosshairs. I can take that crosshairs and shape and frame the image I would like to take a snapshot of as soon as I let go of my mouse. After clicking and dragging, I snap a picture and it brings that picture directly into my spreadsheet. So those are a couple of tips and tricks you can use when you're working inside of your Excel spreadsheet.