Comments on: Top 21 Excel shortcuts

By: BW

BW — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 20:05:47 +0000

Don’t you love that excel allows you to easily type (without the ‘) 0123 (example, account numbers, SSN, etc.)?

Excel can be fun, but the programmers could make it a little more fun / improvements are needed.

By: Gary

Gary — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 17:19:28 +0000

Chuck, it’s much simpler to simply put the + sign in front of the first number instead of an = sign. That way it is all done with the 10 key section. But the point he was making was that Lotus was much better because it anticipated the + sign and didn’t make the extra keystroke necessary. Lotus had much more flexibility and the macros were much easier to use. Having to enter and = sign which is not on the 10 key pad in entering numbers with secondary calculations is a major flaw in Excel, and very inefficient.

And you can still use the @sum and @if, etc commands from lotus instead of = sum etc.

By: Debbie K

Debbie K — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 20:28:06 +0000

This has all been very informative. I too use excel and have amazed myself at what I have done with a few basic some formulas. Do you all remember the DOS days? I miss them sometimes… can of worms?

By: Michelle

Michelle — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 22:02:31 +0000

My favorites are:

F11 – it automakes a chart to a new tab
Alt-Enter that Doug mentioned
CTRL PG UP/DN to toggle worksheets.

I just wish I could find one to quickly copy one worksheet into many. The one spot F4 doesn’t work.

By: Sam

Sam — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 15:58:11 +0000

I started out with handwritten spreadsheets and was thrilled when I first got Visicalc. I used all the Lotus versions from 1.0 up to 5.0. I usually pushed the program to its limit and found while each new version was a big improvement I also often lost something.

Both Lotus and Excel are great products and have made a huge difference in my career.

I found Lotus a better all around product except for data import and the pivot tables. The Lotus Macros were much easier to use than Excels although I think Excels may be more powerful.

S Allen – You have no idea how much slower the mouse is compared to keyboard commands. I could print much faster hitting “/ppag” than taking my hands off the keyboard, finding the mouse, finding the icon and clicking.

The graphical interface (Icons and Mouse) “dumbs down” both products making them slower but easier to use for the average user. Those of us who are/were considered “power users” whine a lot when upgrades seem to go backwards in our eyes.

Thanks for the Key strokes.

By: C. Williams

C. Williams — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 23:09:34 +0000

Thanks for the laughs. I don’t know many HR folks who have time during the day to read these!

By: SWillis

SWillis — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 21:03:18 +0000

Don’t forget the Pivot Table! It allows me to run all kinds of quick summaries of data to the amazement of colleagues that are still intimidated by the variety of tasks that Excel can automatically do (if you know the magic key combinations).

By: S Allen

S Allen — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 19:04:21 +0000

After all the comments above, you printed/listed this again? REALLY?

By: AOD

AOD — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 15:53:17 +0000

I have to agree with Chuck and Doug…I came from the Lotus/WordPerfect era when 2+2 actually returned 4. Now having to type “=sum” and “@if”, etc. becomes very cumbersome. Excel is a great program but I’m afraid Lotus had it right; much more user friendly. Lotus knew if you typed “12345″ that is what you wanted in your cell and didn’t return “#NAME”. I guess it’s all in what you get used to.

By: Chuck S

Chuck S — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 11:56:12 +0000

Lynn,

You must not build any large spreadsheets where one has to combine several numbers or formulas in each cell. 100 cells = 100 extra keystrokes that should not be necessary. It is as if (as Doug says) it is automatically putting an apostrophe first in every cell when obviously that is not called for with numbers unless you want them as text, which is not usually the case.