Excel experts... what functions and features of Microsoft Excel do you find the most useful?

Question

I will be teaching a few hour-long classes on advanced Excel to a group of engineers so they all know the basics and then some... So I'm covering more advanced topics like lookups, mround and a little bit on macros. My question to you is if you use Excel regularly, what advanced features do you find the most helpful?

Answer 1

Wao, that is a good question
Now, For me I found the macros (VBA) is the most powerful and important feature for me
I use it to solve daily issues and tasks
Beside the function itself, both can be the sugar of Excel

Feel free to visit my site and check what I have doen with Excel functions and macros here
http://www.projects.file1.net

Enjoy my profile, I am the VBAXLMan

Answer 2

Listen to Chaminda. You want to use the Text to Columns method he talked about. Just go to: Data > Text to Columns... Then you'll choose Delimited and unselect everything except for Comma. You'll want Comma checked. What this will do is it will separate your data in to separate columns based on where the columns are. So for your example it would separate it into four columns. 123 Anywhere Street New York NY 12345 You may have problems arise if the addresses don't have commas where they need them. Hopefully, that is just a minute number and you won't have to fix many. You can also use that same technique to separate by spaces in the text or by any other character. One IMPORTANT note, make sure you clear out columnt to the right of the column. It moves the data over into the columns to the right. So if you have data immediately to the right if you aren't careful you could overwrite it.

Answer 3

I teach a math modeling class for 3rd year math majors, where we use Excel every day. I would say for us the most useful features are scroll bars and data tables. Other than the usual graphs and functions, of course.

Answer 4

I'm particularly fond of macros and the VLOOKUP formula in the work I do. Pivot tables are also quite useful. I think it would be good for beginning users to know about the formula "wizard".

Answer 5

"If" statements is the number one "advanced" formula criteria that I find useful.

Lookup, like you said is also very useful.

I use Macros mainly as a "shortcut" to change formulas, in a table, to values, which is useful for the application in which I use it.

Did you know that you can use multiple "If" statements within the same formula. It is pretty cool!!!!

Graphs, if you are into that are pretty simple to set up and are very pleasing to the eye.

Filtering is also extremely useful in databases. Sorting too!!!!

Hope this helps!!!!!

Answer 6

In an advanced class I would find Data Filters & Validation Most helpful. That and formatting numbers correctly, and nesting of IF effectively.
Of course you have already mentioned Look Up.

Answer 7

VLOOKUP
IF statements
Conditional SUM (need the analysis toolpak add-in)
String statements, such as LEFT, RIGHT, MID, FIND, etc
Macros

Answer 8

insert function
"Fx" on the toolbar