top 15 advanced Excel 2016 tips and tricks.

Number 1 - Advanced Transpose. You highlight a block of text, right-click, and copy it. Pick
your target location, right-click, paste special, and choose Transpose. Problem is, if you
make a change, the change is not reflected in the new target location. So how do you
make that live? There's a simple way to do it. Go to your target location and make sure
you highlight the rows and columns based on the size of that table. In this case it's 2 by 6.
Don't click anywhere and start typing =TRANSPOSE. Put in left parenthesis and then
highlight the block. Put in right parenthesis and instead of hitting Enter, press Shift-Ctrl-
Enter. That transposes it to your target location and now when you make changes, those
changes are live.

Number 2 - Calendar Picker. Have you ever wanted a calendar to show up next to your
dates? Here's a trick that might work, but first you're going to need to make sure that the
Developer tab is available. So go to File, Options, and go to the Customize Ribbon, and
make sure this Developer is checked. Hit OK. That adds the Developer menu. Click on it,
choose insert, and come down here to the very bottom where the More Controls option is,
click that and in the list scroll down to the Date and Time Picker, and hit OK. It wants you
to place it on the screen somewhere so I'm going to just select a spot right here. Now
you're in Design Mode. If you turn that off you can click on this and bring up a calendar.
We're gonna go back into Design Mode and select this entry and click properties and
under the properties I'm going to type in the cell B2 where that date is located. I'm going to
close that properties window, turn Design Mode off, and now as I pick from the date it
automatically changes my B2 cell location. That gives you a convenient way to put a
calendar on the screen.

Number 3 - Slicers. Let's say we have a table with data that represents the color, size, and
cost. We're used to filtering where we can select from the down arrow and choose just one
option from the menu and filter out the data. There is a better method to be able to select
the data. It's called Slicers. Just highlight the whole table, go to Insert, choose Table, and
make sure this checkmark is turned on for My Table Has Headers. Hit OK. Now click
inside of that table anywhere, and go to Insert again, and choose Slicer. It'll bring up all of
the different filtered columns. Check all three, hit OK, and now you have multiple slicers
representing the data from your table. Now you can just click and select from the list and it
filters on the fly. You can clear the filter, choose a different one, and mix and match
however you want It's a much better method than a filter.

Number 4 - Scenario Manager. Scenario Manager is part of the What-if-analysis in Excel.

I'm looking at a car loan situation where I've plugged in the numbers at 6% for 60 months
on a principle of 35,000. This will be the payment and this is the total cost of the vehicle.
What I want to do is create scenarios for a Best case, a Worst case, and a more Likely
case and see how those numbers come out. I could create those separate columns and
put in the data but if you want to make changes on the fly that's where the scenario
manager comes in. Given that these three items are the variables that can be changed, I'm
going to highlight them I'm gonna go to Data, and click on What-if-Analysis, and choose
Scenario Manager. For the first entry I'm going to click Add and I'm going to call this one
the Best case. The cells that will change are already highlighted and it's going to be those
three so I hit OK and then it asked me to enter the values for each of those. So in the Best
case scenario I might get some special program and I'll get 3% but in order to get that deal
it's going to have to be 36 months and they give me a price of 32,000. I hit OK and it
creates the Best case scenario. Now I'm going to add the second one. We'll call that one
the Worst case. It still brings up the same cells and the Worst case scenario is 8%. It's
going to have to be 60 months and it's for the full price 35,000. And finally, I'm going to add
the Likely. Hit OK and the Likely scenario is, I'm going to get 4% for the 60 months at the
35,000 mark. Now I can come in here once I've created these and hit Show and it changes
the numbers and changes the total. So you can see for the Best-case scenario my total
payment over that period is going to be 33,000. I show the Worst case scenario and if I
show the likely scenario. Another option you have is you can click the summary and it asks
you what is the result cell. Which is this one right here. and I can choose to do a scenario
summary or I can do a pivot table but in this case I'm going to do a summary. I hit OK, it
brings up a new spreadsheet, and you can see the scenario is listed here under the Best,
Worst, and Likely case. It's a very handy tool. An easy method to look at a bunch of
different scenarios and compare your results.

Number 5 - CONVERT Function. CONVERT is a function that allows you to convert data
from one type of measurement into another. It's real simple. You just type in =CONVERT,
the number you're converting from, and then you choose the measurement that you want
to use. There are a million different ones to choose from here and, for example, I'm gonna
choose Liters. Double-click that, enter comma, and now it gives me only the choices that I
can convert liters into. So let's make it Gallons and there's my results. 100 Liters is 26.42
Gallons. That's real straightforward. You can see a lot of different choices for conversions
but let's take this a step further since it's Advanced Excel.
Number 6 - Convert Currency Live. Converting measurements is great but what if you
want to do currency conversion where currency rates change all the time. Here's a slick
trick. Bring up a browser and search for XRATES. This is an exchange rate website. Click
on that and you'll see that it's set to do 1 U.S. dollar into Euros by default. We're going to
go ahead and pick the rate table for the US dollar and it brings up a list of the top ten and a
number of other currencies. All you have to do is copy the URL for this website with this
link. Go back to your spreadsheet, click on the Data tab, go to Get Data From Other
Sources, and select from the web. In the URL paste the link that you just copied and hit
OK. It brings up the tables that are available from that website. The first one being the top
10 list and the second one being the full detail list. So we're going to select that one, click
Load, and there's your table added in. Now from the previous sheet we can create a
formula to take that value and multiply it by the Canadian dollar. Now you can take this a
step further. Create a VLOOKUP and have selectable choices for the other currency, but
now you have the data available from the website and what you can do is if you come
back to the sheet you can also go up to Data, click on Properties, and click this button to
go to the query properties and set this to Refresh Automatically When Opening the File or
on a set number of minutes, and that's how you can get real-time currency conversion
data.

Number 7 - Hide cells, Here's a sneaky trick to hide cells. In this example, we have 3
times 5 equals 15. Let's say we want to hide this number 5 right here. If you right-click, go
to Format Cells, and choose Custom. In the Type, enter semicolon 3 times and hit OK.
That hides that cell even though it's still there.And if you change a number, it still works in
a calculation.

Number 8 - Remove Blanks. Here's a shortcut method to remove blank rows from a list.
Highlight the columns and hit Ctrl-G. Click this Special button and choose blanks and hit
OK. It's now just highlighted all the blank rows. Press Ctrl-+ and then - and choose Shift
Cells Up, and hit OK. That removes all the blank rows.

Number 9 - People Graph. People Graph is an office 365 Adin that gives you a new way to
represent data out of a table. In this example, we're gonna have a region and a number of
subscribers in that region we want to represent it as a people graph. You go to Insert ,click
on the people graph icon, or find it in the menu and it brings up a generic display. Up in the
upper right corner you can see there's a spreadsheet that represents your data. This is
where you select the data that you want to put in the graph. So I'm going to highlight that
block of the table. Hit Create and I'm going to go in there and I'm going to change this to
Subscribers for the title. So there's your graph. You can also go into the settings and pick
from different types, and also change the theme to a different color format, and if you don't
want a person you can select from these different icons to represent the data in your list.
The nice thing is you can change these numbers and it updates it in your graph
automatically. You can click on that in the corners and resize it as needed, move it around,
copy and paste it into other applications. That's People Graph. Number

10 - Track Changes. Just as with other office applications, Excel can track changes. You
may want to use this feature when collaborating on a spreadsheet with others so that you
can see each person's edits. To enable it, go to the Review tab and click on Track
Changes and select Highlight Changes. Make sure you check the box to Track Changes
While Editing. I'm going to choose All, You can also specify who you want to track changes
for. Make sure that this Highlight Changes On Screen is checked, and hit OK. Hit OK to
save it and now you can begin making changes to the data that you have in the list. You'll
notice that each one of these changes puts a mark in the corner of each cell and you can
see who made the change and what time and date and what change was made. If another
person opens the spreadsheet up they'll see the same changes as well. These changes
are just temporary until you accept them. If you come back to the Review tab and go to
Track Changes, choose this Accept or Reject Changes option. It saves it again. Hit OK.
Now you can choose which changes you want reviewed. I'm gonna select Not Yet
Reviewed, from Everyone. Hit OK and now it's going to step you through each one of the
changes and you're given a choice between accepting, rejecting, or you can just accept all
the changes or reject them all. This looks correct. I'm going to hit Accept and it moves to
the next. When you're done it marks all the ones that you've accepted and you can save
that with the spreadsheet. There's also an added feature that allows you to take a look at
all the changes that were made by clicking on Track Changes again and go to Highlight
Changes. Select this check mark to List Changes on a New Sheet. It opens up a history of
all the changes that were made, which cell, and what change was made from the old value
to the new. When you're done and you've accepted or rejected all the different changes,
come up here, go to Highlight Changes, and turn it off, and hit OK. It warns you that this
will remove the work from shared use and save all the changes as permanent. Hit Yes and
you're done. Track Changes is a great collaborative tool that allows you to share
information with other users.

Number 11 - Advanced Filter. We've seen Filters and Slicers but there is another method
to filter data from a table. It's called Advanced Filter. To prep for an Advanced Filter I'm
going to copy this heading information right over here and use it as a criteria selection
area. And for our first Advanced Filter I'm going to choose Item1. That's what I want to
select from this list. If you go to Data there's an Advanced option in the Sort and Filter
section. Click that and it asks you for multiple information. So I'm going to choose, first off,
to Copy this to Another Location. The range that I'm going to select from is going to be this
entire table. The criteria range is going to be the criteria range that we created. The
location I'm going to copy it to is right here. Hit OK and as you can see, it pulled all Item1's
from the table and put the results over here. Now the way this works is each thing that's on
a row is an AND selection. So I can come in here and say I want Item1 and Item2. Click
the Advanced again but in this case the criteria range is going to be all of this including the
Item2 line. I'm going to copy it to another location. It's already set to the same place. I hit
OK and now it's pulled Item1's and Item2's. Now let's say we want to do an OR. I'm going
to take Item2 out and I'm going to choose location A. Both location A and Item1. Click the
Advanced Filter again. The criteria range I'm going to choose just that first row and hit OK.
Now it found only one Item1 with a location A. Now we can take this a step further. I'm
going to choose just a location A and I'm going to select all the ones that are greater than
20. I do the Advanced. Choose Copy to Another Location. The table the criteria range will
select is just this and the copy to location is correct. So there's the only location A that's
greater than 20. So you can use some math in there as well. Advanced Filter is a very
powerful tool with a lot of options.

Number 12 - Analysis Tools. There is a hidden advanced Excel menu available. It's called
Analysis Tools. It's not listed by default so you have to add it manually. To do that go to
File, Options, and choose Add-ins. At the bottom under Excel add-ins hit the Go button
and check this box for Analysis Toolpak. Hit OK. That makes it show up under the Data
tab right over here under Data Analysis. This brings up a number of statistical analysis
tools including correlation, linear regression, moving averages, all kinds of choices here.
Now I'm not going to go into the details because you can find videos that describe these in
more depth but just so you know that they are available from that menu and that's how you
get to it.

Number 13 - NETWORKDAYS Function. The NETWORKDAYS Function counts the

number of working days between one date and another. Just type in =NETWORKDAYS
and pick your start date and end date and there's the number of working days between.
Now optionally it has holidays that you can exclude. So for example, if I put in the fourth of
July. In the formula the third parameter is the holidays. Hit Enter and there it subtracted the
one holiday out of those two date ranges and counted only the workdays.

Number 14 - Embedding. Did you know you could take a spreadsheet table and insert into
a Word document and have it update automatically? The key is make sure you close your
spreadsheet first and open up Word. Go to the Insert tab and select this Text Insert Object.
Choose Create from File and browse to the file you want to insert. Make sure you check
this Link to File and hit OK. That inserts your spreadsheet. Now let's go back to our
spreadsheet. We're going to change from 17 to 18 and we're gonna add a total at the
bottom and we're going to save that. Close your spreadsheet again, come back to your
original Word document. If you right-click on that table, choose Update Link, and now it
updates that information from the spreadsheet. That's Embedding.

Number 15 - Advanced Select. Here's a trick to selecting objects and making changes to
them. Let's say we want to modify all the Item1's in this list. All you have to do is go over to
the Find and Select, click Find, type in Item1, choose Find All, and in this list down here hit
Ctrl-A. That selects and highlights all the Item1's in the list. Now the trick is you can close
this and come over to your formatting area and do all kinds of things like highlight those,
change the color, clear them, and essentially it's doing it only to the ones that you've
selected. That's Advanced Select.