If you have ever tried to copy anything from a PDF and paste it into Excel, you know it usually doesn’t turn out well. There are applications that will convert PDFs into Excel files (with varying degrees of success.) But did you know that Excel has a built in tool to extract any table from […]

CTRL+Backspace     You’re deep in a spreadsheet typing away and have to scroll to the bottom to look at a number. How do you quickly get back to where you were? Ctrl+Backspace will jump you back to the active cell. CTRL+.     You have a large group of cells highlighted and want to move to […]

Have you ever wanted to break up text into two or more lines within the same cell of an Excel worksheet? It’s actually really easy to do. Just hold down the alt key and press Enter to insert a line break. Then type the next line of text. Excel will automatically turn on text wrapping […]

Here’s a problem I’ve run into before. You have a numbered list in Excel, but you insert or remove entries from the list. Then you have to renumber all the rows, or at least hopefully you remember to do it. What if the row numbers could be automatically maintained? This is where SEQUENCE() comes in. […]

Let’s say you have a list of invoices. But what you really want to know is which customers are on that list. You could sort the list by customer name, but here’s an easier solution. In the example below, our original report is in columns A through D. In cell F2, enter the formula =UNIQUE(C2:C8). […]

Do you get tired of adjusting column widths to fit what you think is your longest entry only to discover when you scroll down that the column needs to be wider? Excel makes it easy to adjust your columns widths or row heights to match your data. Let’s start with the simplest example. If you […]

Last month I talked about how to use Transpose to copy data from a row and paste it into a column or vice versa. This month we’ll look at a fairly new Excel function ToCol() that can pull data from several adjacent rows and columns and combine it into one column. (There’s also a ToRow() […]

Have you ever wished you had more space between columns on a spreadsheet, or between the cell contents and the cell border? Some people resort to inserting narrow empty columns between columns of data. But that interferes with the use of timesavers like keyboard navigation shortcuts or Fill Right, and doesn’t help if you’re using […]

You have probably all seen Excel formulas that result in an error such as #DIV/0!, #N/A, #NAME?, #NULL!, #NUM!, #REF!, or #VALUE!. Usually they indicate that you need to correct something in your formula or the data it references. But sometimes the condition that produces the error is unavoidable. In those cases not only does […]

When you copy and paste cells on a spreadsheet, do you get tired of having to resize the columns where you pasted the cells?  There are two good ways to copy the column widths along with your data. Copying entire columns is the fastest and easiest way to copy contents and formatting at the same […]