Excel Cheat Sheet. Keyboard short cuts. Absolute or relative

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1 Useful Excel tps Page 1 Excel Cheat Sheet 08 June :10 Keyboard short cuts Absolute or relative When typing a formula, or editing one, the F4 key will make it either an absolute or relative reference. Relative means the formula will use the cells relative to the cell the formula is in. So if you move or copy of the formula to a new cell it will also move which cells it is picking up. This is relative (no "$" in formula) so it always adds up the two cells above which ever cell the formula is in. Absolute means the formula will always add up those cells no matter where the formula is typed. Select all in block + Pressing the control key and A together will select either the whole worksheet or the table you are currently in. Move to end of "block" then Pressing and releasing the End key and subsequently pressing an arrow key will move the active cell to the end of the block. E.G pressing End and then the Down arrow will go to the last cell with a value in that column. Pressing End and the Right arrow will go to the last cell with a value in the row. Doing this while all the time holding the shift key will allow you to select a whole column or row quickly. This saves you scrolling down to select a whole column. Enter todays date + This will enter the current date in the active cell Sum all above + Instead of entering a "=SUM" formula at the base of a column this short cut will automatically add the values in the above cells. Note this only works for columns of numbers, and will only add directly above it, until it finds the first blank cell above. It will not work for rows of data.

2 Useful Excel tps Page 2 Scroll through tabs + Holding the control key and pressing either page up or page down will allow you to scroll through tabs in a workbook, a fast way of getting between tabs you might use a lot without having to reach for the mouse. Useful formulae The IF formula =IF(Condition, do if True, do if False) This formula is a key formula in excel. It requires a Condition that will result in something being either True or False. So a condition might be as simple as 1 = 1 or involve the sum of a range of values being greater than a control value, EG: Here we are using the if statement to check if something is overspent. Using the SUM() formula and 'evaluating' if the total costs are larger than the budget held in cell B2. If it is the Statement "Over Budget" be the result of the formula. The SUMIF formula =SUMIF(range, condition, sum array) A very powerful formula that allows conditional adding of values, based on some 'criteria'. For example if we only wanted to add together pay costs for a single employee:

3 Useful Excel tps Page 3 Note: in a Sumif forumla then the column or 'array' where the numerical values to add together are present is the last part of the formula. If using a SUMIFS formula the numerical values to add together would be the first section of the formula. Here we are using the formula to say: In the list of all names (Column A), any time the name is equal to Bob (cell E3), add up the values paid (Column C). There is also a =SUMIFS formula which works in the same way, but allows multiple criteria for adding together, so in this case it might be: Here we have changed the formula around, we put the column to be added first. Then we can add as many pairs of 'Criteria Range, Criteria' as we need. In this case only two, Column A is the 'criteria range' as it is the column where the name Bob (cell E3) is found, then also using Column B to identify the month we are interested in "Jan". This means the formula will only add together the pay column where the row has the name Bob and in the month Jan.

4 Useful Excel tps Page 4 The Index & Match formula =IINDEX and =MATCH are two formulae often used together and is a faster and more reliable method of doing a VLOOKUP. They are used: =INDEX(range, MATCH(value, lookup range,0)) INDEX is a formula used to return the value on a specific row in a column. So in this example we want to return the name of a location in Column B. To find which row from column B the value is on we use the MATCH formula. MATCH is a way of finding the row number a value appears on. So by using the criteria of 1 in Cell D4, match will find which row in column A that value appears on. In this case the MATCH statement will return a value of two (as that is the row number of the value 1 in column A) and hence the INDEX statement will return the value found in the second row of column B. The 0 at the end of the MATCH statement is used to 'zero base' the MATCH formula, meaning it has to find an exact match for 1 and that the column DOESN'T have to be ordered. This gives the advantage over VLOOKUP, which will only work in an ordered table and if it can't find the value will go to the nearest value available. The Text formula =TEXT(value, format) The text formula can be used to return a value in a specified format. The format section is user defined and has a range of possibilities. Original format Formula Result Note =TEXT(A2,"##") 122 removes decimal points 1350 =TEXT(A3,"#,###") 1,350 Adds thousands seperator 11/05/2015 =TEXT(A4,"dd-mm") Reformats date to day - month 11/05/2015 =TEXT(A5,"dddd-mmm") Monday-May Returns the "long" version of date 11/05/2015 =TEXT(A6,"d/m/y") 11/5/15 Returns the short version of date The COUNT formula =COUNT(range) This formula counts how many numbers are in a range.

5 Useful Excel tps Page 5 This will return 11, even though there are 12 rows of cells with values only 11 of them have numbers. In this way we can easily count the number of sales that have happened. =COUNTA(range) By adding A to COUNT the formula will now count the cells in the given range with any value, not just numerical values. So in the example above it would return 12, not 11 as it will count the heading as well. Very helpful formula for counting the number of suppliers in a report or how many dates are in a column etc. =COUNTIF(range, criteria) Using count if allows for a conditional count. In the example above we gave the column, A, to be counted where rows were equal to the condition "Jane". Working days forumla =NETWORKDAYS(date1, date2, [holidays]) This formula will return the number of working days between two dates. Result: 216 days You can add an optional 'holiday' function to this formula, a list of dates the office wasn't open during a working day and it will not include those in the number of working days between the two dates.

6 Useful Excel tps Page 6 Result: 213 days Combining strings = "some string" & "some other string" Instead of using the CONCATENATE this method is much faster and gives you more control. Result You can add other characters with this method, such as spaces, speech marks, hyphens: The Subtotal formula =SUBTOTAL(function number, range) The Subtotal function has really useful features and so you may want to use it instead of =SUM(). When using this function the first criteria is what 'number function' you wish to use. The most often used is the number 9 function, which is the SUM function (the others being average, count etc.). You then declare the range you wish to sum. It has two main advantages: That when you filter a column the Subtotal will reflect the total of the visible rows only. Also it will ignore any other subtotals that are in the rows it is totalling, avoiding the double counting that can happen with the SUM formula.

7 Useful Excel tps Page 7 Result: (so ignored the 65.1 which is another =SUBTOTAL formula) The Round formula =ROUND(value, number of digits) In the above we are rounding to one decimal place. The LEFT, RIGHT and MID statements =LEFT(value, number of characters) =RIGHT(value, number of characters) =MID(value, start character, number of characters) These statements are very helpful if you want to extract part of a text string. For example if you want only the first 6 characters of a whole account string, or the last 6. LEFT works by defining the number of characters from the start of the original text to extract. RIGHT works by defining the number of characters from the end of the original text to extract. MID is a way of extracting any part of the original string, giving it the starting and ending location. Original Acount string Formula Result KH =LEFT(A2,6) KH =RIGHT(A3,2) 10 KH0000 KH =MID(A4,8,5) Sometimes you may wish to know the length of a text string. =LEN(value) Will return the number of characters in a text string. The Search Formula =SEARCH(find text, within text) This formula allows you to find the location of some text within a text string. It will return the starting character location (ie, in a bit of text 10 characters long it might be the 4th character). Result: 5 - the word 'Where' appears 5 characters in

8 Useful Excel tps Page 8 This formula can be very useful if combined with the MID formula from above: Here we have extracted a surname by knowing that it will be the characters immediately after the full stop. So by using the SEARCH formula to find the Start character location (plus 1 as we want the characters after the full stop, not the full stop itself) within the MID formula we can do this for any address. The Cell Formula =CELL("filename") This can be a handy way to insert the current file location of the workbook you are using. Useful for Audit control and if sharing workbooks so everyone knows where the file is saved/opened from. Result The Is Blank formula =ISBLANK(cell reference) A way to find out if a cell doesn't contain a value. For example if you want to know if the supplier field is blank or if a name is missing. The formula will return either TRUE or FALSE and can be used handily in conjunction with the IF statement: The NOT statement can be used with any function which returns true or false, such as IF(1=1) would return TRUE the NOT function allows you to reverse the answer. So =IF(NOT(1=1)) would become FALSE. When using the NOT function with the ISBLANK function it allows you to check if a cell does contain a value, so =IF(NOT(ISBLANK(cell reference)),do some thing because there is a value, ) In the above example we can then do:

9 Useful Excel tps Page 9 Use of wildcards In most excel formulae of excel you can use wildcards and NOT functions. For instance you may be searching for a text string but don't know what the whole string will be or want to use the count if function to count all the instances where it is not equal to. Using the NOT (<>) function: Note: be careful when using Not (<>) in a countif formula as if you use the whole column it will also count all the blank rows.