Beckers Top 3 Excel Tricks
Beckers Top 3 Excel Tricks
Beckers Top 3 Excel Tricks
Using Microsoft Excel is an essential part of the modern accountant’s daily repertoire. Gone are the days of the handheld
calculator, and in its place is a powerful spreadsheet program that can perform hundreds of functions at the click of a button!
Excel can be used for everything from storing rows of financial transactions to calculating formulas and organizing information –
but as an accountant, you’re probably already familiar with its capabilities.
It’s safe to say that knowing the ins and outs of Excel is essential for a profession as data-oriented as accounting. If used
correctly, Excel can make your job infinitely easier, and can help you save time and brain power. Becker has compiled our top
three tips that are easy to implement in an Excel workbook, and that can help you work quickly and more efficiently!
Here are the best tips from Becker’s own Excel guru and instructor,
Dr. Wayne Winston, that every accountant should have in their back pocket.
*NOTE – if you’re viewing this article in a PDF / non-web file, you’ll need to right click, copy and paste the hyperlinks into your browser to download these Excel files!
Tip #1
Unique function
Every accountant knows about the filter function, which can help sift through a large range of data - but did you
know that you can use the UNIQUE function to return all unique values from a given list? Here’s how!
*Note – This trick will only work for Microsoft Windows Insider accountholders – you can join
the community for free on Microsoft’s website.
Copy and paste this link into a new browser tab to download the Excel file and follow along.
1. For a given set of data, create a table - to do so, select the desired data and use the keystroke combination
CONTROL + T.
Copy and paste this link into a new browser tab to download the Excel file and follow along.
The workbook contains a blank worksheet for the months January-June and a blank summary worksheet.
Suppose we want each of our monthly worksheets to track units sold, price, and revenue in the cell range B1:B3.
To copy your setup across all sheets, follow these easy steps:
1. Click on the January worksheet tab and hold down the Shift key and click on the June tab.
2. Fill in cells A1:A3 of the January worksheet as shown in Figure 2, with data for units, price and revenue. Enter
numbers in cells B1 and B2, but in cell B3, enter the formula ‘=B1*B2’.
Copy and paste this link into a new browser tab to download the Excel file and follow along.
Use the workbook to get started – it’s the same workbook as in Tip #1! Here is how to do it:
1. Start on the worksheet “Pivot Table.” In cell F16, the formula =UNIQUE(sales[Product]) will return a list of all
products.
That’s not all! Here are a few other handy Excel tips that you can use to help format and organize your
spreadsheets the way you want, with just a clack of a few keys:
Create a This keyboard shortcut turns a range of data into a table for easy
Ctrl T
table access to sorting!
Conditional Select the text you want to format, then use these keystrokes to
Alt O D
formatting create new conditional formatting rules - color coding, anyone?
Add today’s In a given cell, the control button held down with the semicolon key
Ctrl ;
date will enter today’s date, so you don’t have to open your calendar app!
Format cell This sequence will pull up available formatting for text, including
Ctrl 1
options currency, dates and more.
We hope these techniques have helped you become an Excel wizard and make your workdays a little bit easier. Learn more
of Becker’s best-kept Excel secrets with our Microsoft Excel Fundamentals + Data Analytics Certificate.
Not ready to level up your Excel expertise? Explore all of Becker’s CPE offerings.
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