Microsoft Excel is such a powerful tool that it is regarded as the bread and butter of people working in the finance industry. Companies have been using Excel for decades now and for the years to come, Excel will be one of the key skills required to get a job especially if you want to make a career in fields like Investment Banking, Private Equity, etc. Therefore, it becomes essential to level up your Excel game and this article is here to teach you just that.
Now, it is crucial to realize that Excel is a tool and in order to get better at it, you will not only need to widen your horizon of knowledge but also get smarter at executing what you already know as well.
So here are 5 tips from my experience that you can follow to improve your Excel game altogether:
Stop using the mouse
If you notice, a lot of time is consumed when you use a mouse. This is because when you are working on your keyboard, you actually lift your hand, put it on the mousepad/mouse, look for the cursor, find where you need to go, take your cursor there and then click on that option. So, there are so many steps involved. Now to save up all this time, what you can do is just use an excel shortcut!
For example, if you want to select an entire row in an Excel sheet, using a mouse would take like 2 seconds to do it but you can just press Shift + space and your work will be done in less than a second. In percentage terms, you just did the work 50% of the time. I know it sounds amazing! So, try investing 15 minutes every day in learning basic shortcuts to using Excel and you’ll notice the difference over time. Here is a link which you can refer to learn a few basic but absolutely essential shortcuts.
Start using the alt key
I can’t stress enough on this point how the alt key can double your speed of doing work not only in Excel but across all MS Office tools. Alt key basically activates the ribbon of your workbook which you can then use to toggle and access any feature provided by Excel. This is also shown in the image below:
Although it might seem hard to do at first it will hardly take you a week to get fully accustomed to it. So just by following this tip, you can actually 2x your speed in 1 week.
Solve complex problems online/ take part in competitions
Competing in competitions and solving Excel quizzes online are a bunch of fun ways where you can put your brain to use and learn how to tackle problems in Excel. For better learning, try doing this in groups with your colleagues or friends. It’s like an Excel gym for the brain. This has helped me personally in developing my understanding of how Excel essentially works and how to deal with problems in various situations.
Create macros for yourself
This is a “slightly” advanced task to do but will be very useful if you are not able to figure out a better shortcut for doing a personalized task. You can just create a macro! A macro is nothing but a self-made shortcut. You can create a macro by recording it or typing out a VBA script. Also, they come in extremely handy as you can customize them as per your needs. You can learn to create macros here.
Expand your horizon
There is a whole library of functions present in Excel across various categories (like arithmetic, financial, text, etc.). Take out 5-10 mins every day to learn a new function and the best part is you don’t really need to memorize them. You can take up various excel beginner as well as advanced courses online to sharpen your knowledge and understanding.
Doing this will give you an idea to deal with various problems that came in your way or maybe impress your colleagues/seniors/interviewer as well. You can also follow certain pages on social media that post regular videos regarding Excel functions daily so maybe when you are just scrolling through your feed, you may end up upskilling yourself.
