Excel Quick Tips

In Cell line breaks

When entering data into a cell pressing Alt + Enter will create a line break and you can continue entering data.

Format part of a cell

Double click on a cell to edit it, select the text you want to format. On the Home tab you can then use formatting options like bold, italics, font size, etc. on the selection.

Repeat action

Press F4 to repeat the last action.

For example if you deleted a column, selecting another column and pressing F4 will delete the selected column.

Multi-cell data Entry

Hold down the control key and use the mouse to select non-continuous ranges and/or cells. Type in a value/formula and press Ctrl + Enter. The value/formula will be input to all selected cells.

Fill handle to copy or extend data

Double click on fill handle at the bottom right corner of the cell to copy the data in the cell down to the bottom of your current data area.

This also works with a range of cells. If the values in the cell are a sequence of numbers or dates, Excel will extend the data rather than copying it.

It will also extend the data for any values that match a built-in or custom lists. Excel has built in lists for days and months.

Another way to use the fill handle is to left click on it and drag it to copy or extend data across a range of cells.

Data entry dropdown list

In a column of text data press Alt + down arrow to display a list of data from the column. Use the up arrow or down arrow keys to select a value and then press Enter to put the value in the active cell.

Any duplicate values are shown as a single entry in the list. Blank cells in the column will be treated as the start of data for the list.

This method works best with columns that only have a few unique text values.

Quickly sum a range

Press Alt + = to quickly sum a range. Alternately click on the AutoSum icon on the Home tab.

Automatically resize columns

Select one or more columns by clicking and dragging on the column headings. Double click on one of the vertical lines between the column letter(s) that you have selected.

The columns will be resized based on their contents.

Hide Tab menus

Double click on any of the ribbon tabs to hide the tab menus. To show them again double click on the tab again.