In this video tutorial we're going to take a look at the intermediate
Skills tips and tricks that you need to know in order to use excel
Properly and efficiently if you haven't already watched my other excel video. It's called the Beginner's guide to
Excel and I highly recommend that you start with that video before watching this one
so one of the last things that I showed in [that] beginners guide video was how to do some formatting how to
Change let's say the column widths how to do italics and things like that well in this video
We're going to start off [by] looking at a couple of advanced formatting options, then I'll show you a data entry
Shortcut that's fantastic called the autofill handle then we'll take a look at how to do formulas and functions in excel
And then we'll finish with a few more intermediate and advanced tips and tricks so here. I am in the spreadsheet
I started in the beginners tutorial
It's a list of movies that I own and I'm putting in [some] data about those movies well
I want to show you a couple of shortcuts as you're trying to format the data
That's in a spreadsheet
These tricks will save you a lot [of] time the first is called the format
Painter and you can find it here on the home tab home Ribbon in the clipboard group
And it looks like a paintbrush the format painter is what it is and the way
It works is let's say that part of your spreadsheet has a format that you wish other parts of your spreadsheet
Had all you have to do is click on the good example that [you] would like click [here] on the format painter and that
Copied it. It didn't copy the content rather it copied the format of this cell
So now all I need to do is move [my] mouse to [the] place where I want to copy that
Format to and I can click and if I release the mouse click it will copy the format
But Let's say you would like the entire range this range
Of 5 or 6 cells to have that layout you can just click and drag
Holding the click and then release and you can see now they've all been painted with that format in this case
That's not at all what I want so I'm going to undo it with this arrow up here in the upper left and it takes
Me [back] now another more advanced formatting option that is pretty exciting at least to me is what they call
Conditional formatting so it's up here at the top on the home tab home Ribbon here it is in the styles group
Conditional formatting and the way this works is you [select] a column or a row [either] way?
I'm going to select the column d. So I just click [on] it and the entire Column is selected [now]
[I] simply go up here to conditional formatting and click and
It gives me some options it mentions Rules several times basically
we're going to set up some rules for the content of these cells and
The formatting of these cells and the easiest example I can think of is color scales, so let's just look at that
But I want you to explore this in more detail if you're interested in conditional formatting because it's really an exciting tool
So I'm going to go into color scales
and I want the color of
Each cell to change to adjust depending on how valuable the movie is now to do this I would select
Probably this color scale here
It looks like it has green at the top and red at the bottom
So the idea the more green it [is] the more valuable it is the redder it is the more worthless
It is if you want [to] reverse that you can and there are all of these [other] options as well with different color schemes
But I'm going to go with that first one
I'll just click on it and what this does is it evaluates the entire column it looks for the highest numbers and
Gives them the greenest background and then the lowest numbers get the darkest red
Background and then everything else in between is adjusted accordingly so that easily I can just glance at this spreadsheet
And I can see where the most valuable movies are if you like that please investigate conditional formatting more
There's great ways to display the data in a conditional way you can use Data bars
You can say if the highlighted cell is greater than 10 then make the background
Green or put the text in bold if it's less than 5 then format it with a background of red
There's all of these if then statements that you can use with these highlight cells rules. There's top/bottom rules top 10%
bottom 10% icon sets
We can show arrows going up down left or right and just some really exciting
Formatting options that you [have] here okay before we leave formatting and move on to a few other things
I want to show you that because these numbers represent currency
I probably should format them a little differently so I can click here on D and everything in Column D
That's a number will get formatted differently right now everything in here is formatted in a general way
Which is to say that there's nothing special about the way
They're formatted at least the numbers themselves however if I go up here
I can change that from general to any one of these other things
And there's even more beyond that there's also some shortcuts like this. I just want to click on the dollar sign now
they all show up as
Accounting currency if you don't need it or want it to be accounting you can just go down and do regular
Currency all that changes is where the dollar sign is located
Okay, so this is awesome this spreadsheet is turning out great so far
Next let's look at formulas. This is where the true power of excel is found
I believe so far in our spreadsheet [all] we've done is enter text or numbers and then also in some cases
We've applied some formatting but other than that we haven't put anything special into the spreadsheet
well
Let's change that what I'd like to do next is put in some
Formulas that will help me know some things like what's the total value of my DVD collection?
What is the average value of the DVDs that [I] own and what's the most expensive?
Value and the least expensive stuff like that all right, so let's figure that out down here at the bottom [of] the spreadsheet
[I'm] going to create a formula now. It doesn't have to be here
I could put the formula anywhere on this spreadsheet or another spreadsheet, okay, wherever I want to put this formula
I can do it, but I'm going to do it here so I'll just click and whenever I do a formula in excel
[I] click on a cell and then I think to myself the phrase this cell so [I] click this cell
Equals and I want to find out the total amount that my collection is worth
So I need to somehow add up all of those numbers
[let] me show you the hard way first the hard way would be to say okay. We have a [five] so I'll type in five
Plus two plus five and I can just keep doing this plus six plus nine
I can just keep doing that basically creating a formula
And then all I have to do is tap return or enter and look it adds up those numbers the thing is that's way
Too tedious, so instead of doing that what I can do is type in the word sum
so this cell is equal to the sum of
And then you put a left
parenthesis and now I just need to describe the
Cell or in this case the range that I want it to add up that
I want it to sum fortunately as I showed in [the] beginners video
I can name a range every range in excel has a name and the name of this range is
D3
Through D 22 so I'll just type D3 and if you remember from the beginners video the word through is
Denoted with a colon and then D
22 and then you're supposed to put another parenthesis the end parenthesis now
I'm going to not do that just to show you that even though you're supposed to you. Don't have to you now hit enter and
Look what it's done. It's added up all of those numbers [the] grand total worth of my DVD collection is
135 Dollars
[now] if you want to make sure that it worked you can double click [on] it and look what it did it
Highlighted all of the numbers that it got that it included in the formula
Now let me show you an alternate way the way. I [just] showed
You is one of the nicest quickest ways to do it
Especially if you have a giant spreadsheet, but there are a couple of other ways in addition to typing in the range
I could just move my mouse up to the top
click and drag with my mouse on the range that I would like it to add up and
Then just tap return and you get the same results now
There's also yet another even faster and easier way to do it
And I'm going to delete my formula in order to show you this properly what I would do is
I would just click on the cell but instead of typing equals
I can just go [up] here on the home Ribbon and go to the editing group and here
We have something called auto sum, it's this symbol here, and you can just click [on] it
And it will automatically look immediately above and it will add up
Everything in those cells so I can hit enter and I the same results
So that's the fastest. I will say that sometimes it gets it wrong sometimes it gets the wrong data
So just watch out for it
I usually use autosum
But just be a little bit skeptical
Sometimes it might include data that you don't want included okay speaking of including data that you don't want
Notice what it did to my conditional formatting now
This is the only green value and everything else is small compared to it, right
So I need to fix that with my conditional formatting I'll go in and highlight that entire Column and I'm going to clear the rules
Okay, so it gets it completely out
and I just
want to [do] conditional formatting with
Just those numbers not the total so now I go in conditional formatting color scales and look that's back to being useful
Okay, now I should go in and type total and maybe put these in bold just to show that this number is different
It's special it's different than those other numbers, okay next
I'd like to do an average formula, and it's similar [I] would just say to myself this cell is equal to the average
Left Parenthesis, and then I can click and drag or I can type in the range or notice that there is an auto
Average which again, you should use it. It's great, but just be a little skeptical of the results
I'm going to double click between those cells to make it so you can see the word average
Next I want to do one of what's the highest value and the lowest [value]
For these the formula is a little
Different for highest the formula is this this cell is equal to the [max] or just max?
Left parenthesis click and drag on the range or type in the range
It's up to you hit return so what it did is it?
Looked through that range [found] the maximum number the highest number and printed it here
Next I'll do lowest for lowest
We do this cell is equal to min left
parenthesis and the range I'll type it in this time D3 through D [22] d 3
through D 22 hit enter
And there's the lowest so you can see these formula are pretty useful
You can get some really good numbers out of them
So those are probably the four most common ones that I use some average Max and min
But just know that there are many many more
functions that you [can] use if you want to see pretty much an exhaustive list of all [of] the
Functions that you [can] use just type in equals, and then look up here. This is the formula bar is what we have here and
It's an alternative to typing your formula right here [in] the cell
You [could] just go up to the formula bar and start typing and notice as you type you get some suggestions
So it's recommending because I typed in [Avril] it's recommending average average a average if there's four different average
Functions that I could draw from okay, so it will give suggestions
That's one thing to know about but also over here on the left. Look what it does. There's a click drop-down
Where you get some pretty good suggestions about the functions that you [might] want there's also a formulas tab
Where you can go and a whole function library?
Where you can get math, and trig formulas lookup and reference formulas [texts] logical these are great recently used
financial formulas and if you really don't know which one you want to do just go here to
Insert function, and you can get it on most of these dropdowns
And then just type a brief description of what you want to do. Let's say. I want to count the number of
DVDs that I have so I'll do a search for count and it brings up some
Options that I have and it tells me what exactly it's going to do so use these tools that you have
Use the formula bar use the formulas tab and if you need to use the insert function button
That gives you some additional options, so you can also click here insert function
So have fun playing around with formulas and functions. So they're very powerful
Next we're going to take a look at a few intermediate and maybe some advanced tips and tricks that you should know [about]
One that is pretty well known is called the autofill handle
And this is where you'll find it when you click on a cell look in the lower, right corner
There's a green square and if you put your mouse on that square it will become a plus sign now
It's already a plus sign
But it becomes a black
Plus sign once you see that you know that you've got the autofill handle
And what you can do with this is you [can] click and drag to copy. What's in the cell?
So if I want to copy 2015, I just click and drag it's 2015 again 2015 again
and I can just keep doing that I can even just click and drag and get a whole column of
2015 so [that's] the autofill handle I'm going to undo that
now that also works with text not just
With numbers so I can copy what's in a cell by using the autofill handle and clicking and dragging now
What's really cool is you can copy a pattern so right here?
I just clicked and dragged to highlight 2016 2015 now
If I use the autofill handle look what it does it figures out the pattern the pattern is minus [one]
subtract one
And it just repeated that pattern so if you will show the autofill handle
The Pattern that you would like for it to copy it will copy that pattern you can also
Use the autofill handle to copy a formula now in this case the formula doesn't work too. Well, this is the sum formula
It's trying to add up all of these numbers when I use the autofill handle dragged it over look what it did now
It's trying to sum up this column and so because those aren't [numbers]. It's not working real well, but let me do it this direction
You can see it is now adding up the years it thinks [that] it's currency, but that's okay
It's adding up all of these years and coming up with a total so I just love the autofill handle
It's especially good for anything related to time so for example dates. Let's say
I want to put in each of the months of the year
With dates and times you don't even have to establish a pattern you can just type in the [first]
Thing that's related to date or time
And then just go to the corner click and drag and look it automatically knows what comes next same with days of the week
same with full dates
and
It's also the same with times
So this autofill handle is just a lifesaver [a] time-saver for sure so I'm going to select all of that
Just by clicking on the column letters across the top clicking and holding and then I'll right-click and choose clear
Contents, and that clears it out, but I wanted you to see that autofill handle
Okay, next up just three fast
Rapid-fire tips that I think everyone needs to know if you're using excel [more] than just at a beginning level [and] the first one is
How to sort so I put my movies in just in random order, but I would like to sort them alphabetically
So what I'll do is
I'll click on the first cell of the first record so star wars I clicked on that cell
Now either on the home tab or on the data Tab either one
You should be able to find sort and filter
I'm going to go to the data tab here's sort and I would like it to sort
Alphabetically a to z so I click on it and look what it did now all of the movies are alphabetized
From a to z now the first time you do this you're going to be worried that you'll lose the integrity of your spreadsheet
[that] [maybe] the dates won't match up now, but if you notice they do
Okay, go back rewind the video if you want, but this used to say 2007 now
It says 2003 so sorting is a really great feature in excel. What about filtering?
What is filtering well filtering is a way to eliminate parts of your spreadsheet?
Temporarily so that you can see the data you want to see to turn on filtering what I like to do is click and drag
Across the Column headings that I've created
so location Genre value ETc once I've highlighted all of them I go up to the top and I click filter and
Notice they all now have a little [drop-down] arrow
And so what I'm going to use this to do is I want to eliminate all of [the] PG-13 movies
Let's say we're going to have a birthday party for a small child. I don't want to show a movie
That would be too scary, I would go into ratings and click and right now
It's showing everything okay, so I want to deselect all and go down, and I just want to choose
Pg. That's the only one. I want selected now if I had g movies I could select those too
But I'll just stick with that click ok and you can see it looks like it got rid of those additional records
It really didn't get rid of them. You can see here on the left
It jumps from [one] two jumps to five and in excel
You just cannot eliminate row numbers or column headings. They always exist. They can be hidden, and that's what's happened here
Is they're hidden but they still exist [all] right? So isn't that pretty useful
I love filtering even more really than sorting now to get the data all showing again
I can just click here on what looks like a funnel. Okay? It used to be the drop-down arrow now. It's a funnel
I just click on it and
Go to select all click [ok] and that takes the filter off
I could do the same kind of filter for Genre
And I could say I only want to see comedy or children's movies things like that
So filters are very powerful now the last more advanced tip that I want to share with you is called Freeze Panes
This spreadsheet really is not that big let's say I go buy a hundred more DVDS
[then] it's really going to be a bigger spreadsheet
and it's going to be harder to
Put in my data and even to look at it as your spreadsheet gets more vertical
You can kind of lose track of what your column titles are
So that's where freeze panes comes in what you do with Freeze panes is you click?
Underneath the row that you would like to freeze so I'm going to click on three because that's underneath my column titles
then I'm going to go to the view tab the view Ribbon and notice there's an option in the window group called Freeze Panes and
Watch what happens when I click freeze panes, [okay]?
It first pops up with three options, and I'm just going to click freeze panes
[so] now as I browse down the page as I enter more records
[look] what happens those first two Rows stay visible to me
and that's because I froze everything above [Row] 3 so that's where I'm going to stop in Reality a
Comprehensive excel tutorial would be 15 20 25 [hours] long and this is already too long of a video
But I really believe that if you watch my beginners guide to excel video and this intermediate
Video that you will have what you need to get started using excel effectively as you continue using and learning excel
I'd recommend that you this resource here at the top. Tell me what you want to do
you can [just] type in something that you're trying to do and it will give you some help and
Some Guidance on how to do it
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So that we can continue learning together
