Being good at Excel has never been more necessary than it is in today’s data-driven world. No matter how experienced you are in your career or how familiar you are with the workplace, a solid background in Excel opens countless doors. Now that we’ve entered 2024, the necessity of Excel abilities has become even more critical. From Industry to professional area, Excel’s use is widespread. This blog will outline the ten vital Excel skills that everyone should know in 2024. Whether you want to streamline your processes, evaluate data, or improve your productivity, these vital abilities will assist you to adapt to modern-day’s competitive world. Let’s have a look at the quintessential Excel skills that will enhance your abilities and make your work faster.
Sparklines
One of my personal favorites.
Sparklines allow you to insert miniature graphs inside an individual cell to easily visualize data.
•Select range
•Insert ⇢ Sparkline
• Choose type
People Graph
Using ‘People Graph’ is an easy way to liven up your spreadsheet, especially when tracking metrics related to, well, humans.
Create an infographic to visualize social media engagement, app users, customers, & more.
Tables
If you’re not using tables in Excel, you should be.
• Clean formatting
• Auto-expand as new data is added
• Total row quick and easy data summaries
• Formulas carry through entire columns
• Create dynamic charts that update automatically & much more.
Slicer
Now that you’re using tables, let’s insert one of my favorite filtering tools.
•Click anywhere inside a table
•Go to table ⇢ insert slicer
•Select the fields you want
A dialog box will appear.
Click any slicer button & data is filtered accordingly.
Data Validation
If you’ve spent any time working in spreadsheets at all you know one thing:
They’re only as good as the data entered.
My favorite way to ensure consistency & accuracy is Drop Down lists.
It’s easy & guarantees the data will be entered correctly––every time.
Flash Fill
Let’s say you’ve got all the data you need––it just isn’t in the right place.
“Flash Fill” is your friend.”Flash Fill” is your friend.
Quickly extract pieces of text from one cell and move them to another OR combine text from multiple cells into a single place.
Consolidate
Take data from multiple tabs.
Consolidate into one.
Sum, average, count, it’s your choice.
By creating links to the source data, your consolidation tab will update automatically.
The best part? No formulas required.
Automatic Abbreviations
Autocorrect is more of an annoyance than a help.
Let’s change that.
Set up your own custom list of abbreviations, and bend its powers to your will.
Type ‘TBD’ Press ‘Enter” Output = ‘To be determined’
Conditional Formatting
As you can tell, I’m a big fan of visualizing data.
Conditional formatting is one of the best (and easiest) ways to do this.
Let’s face it, if your data looks good, you look good.
Spice it up by adding data bars, heat maps, or icon sets to show trends:
Format Paint
This one will save you time & bring consistency to your worksheets.
With Format paint, you can copy formatting with the click of a button.
•Select the cells you’d like to copy
•Click the paintbrush
•Select where you want the formatting to go.
It’s that easy.