Excel stands out as a powerful program that can help you save time and money, but most people don’t know about Excel’s different functions and tricks. Spreadsheet consultancy company The Excel Experts give you some quick wins to help you use Excel.

Automatically Calculate Addition

Excel calculates data for you so you don’t have to input every single point into the program. For example, maybe you want the program to add cells A1-3 together into A4.

Click on cell A4, then type “=SUM(” into the cell without the quotation marks. From here, you click on cell A1 and drag until cell A3. Excel should highlight all three cells if you click and drag, so you know that it selected all those cells.

Now A4 should display “=SUM(A1:A3”. Return to cell A4 and close it off with a parenthesis, so that the cell displays “=SUM(A1:A3)”. When you press enter, it will add cells A1-3 automatically, even if any of the numbers change.

Automatically Calculate Subtraction, Multiplication, and Division

This also works for subtraction, multiplication, and division. Type the following formulas into the cell that you want the calculation to occur, with A1 representing the first cell you want and A2 representing the second cell.

Subtraction: =A1-A2
Multiplication: =A1*A2
Division: =A1/A2

Please keep in mind that you can only select two cells at a time using these formulas.

Repeating Patterns

Lets say you need to make a table for every week in the year to track all profits and costs for your company. You don’t want to hand type 1-52 into Excel. Luckily, Excel identifies patterns and will fill in the cells for you.

Start by typing “1” into cell A1, then type “2” into cell A2. You can then click on A1 and drag to A2. From here, click on the box in the bottom right corner of A2. Drag this down for the other 50 cells. This will quickly create a numbered row for each week in the year.

This process works for any repeating pattern that you need to put into Excel. Simply input the first two or three numbers for the pattern, highlight them, and Excel can calculate the rest for you.

These three quick wins will help you to use Excel more efficiently and effectively. They will save you time and money, making your experience with Excel easier and enjoyable.