As I began discovering the world of operations, I challenged myself to become familiar with the bread-and-butter program required for an operations role, Excel. I’ve used Excel for basic data entry in the past. Upon first opening the program, I thought to myself, “Oh, it’s just a bunch of blocks that I type stuff into to keep it organized. Cool.” But upon researching, I realized Excel is more than just a spreadsheet, it’s a machine. With Excel, there are tricks and shortcuts that will save you time and effort and are nothing short of satisfying. Let’s walk through them.

Autofill 

As soon as you enter data into a column, Excel takes notice. It remembers what you say better than your significant other. If you ever need to repeat the same data into another block, Excel will, quite literally, have you finishing each other’s sentences. It feels like the machine is reading your mind. 

A to Z

Data in alphabetical order? Yes, please. Having a machine do all the work of sorting for you? Say less! If you’ve ever been tasked with filing, which I have done lots of, or tried alphabetizing a spreadsheet by hand, it’s a real pain in the butt. Looking at your list or pile of data and having to run the alphabet song through your head five times in a row to make sure all of your letters are in the right order adds quite the strain to data collecting. Thankfully, Excel has the beautiful function of doing that for you. You simply select your desired column, and click sort A to Z creating effortless satisfaction. 

Fill

This one might be my favorite. If you input January into one block, by clicking the corner and dragging down or across the adjacent blocks, it will automatically fill those blocks with the following months. Or, if need be, you can select the option to have the data in the block you selected copy into the cells instead. There’s nothing better than the feeling of precious time and labor being saved, and watching those cells be filled in with one click is incredibly satisfying. 

Sum

Double check, triple check, or even quadruple check is the game of long addition. It’s time-consuming, takes a great deal of brain-power, and requires precision since one mistake can throw your answer off completely. By using the sum function, it’s as easy as typing your equation into a cell, pressing the enter key, and feeling the satisfaction of finding the answer faster than you would using a calculator. 

Pie Charts

Okay…who doesn’t love a good pie chart? To have data presented in a visual format is beautiful, and pie charts, in my opinion, are the pinnacle. With Excel, you can pull data from any table into a visual masterpiece. Perfect for reports, powerpoints, blog posts, and more. 

This is just the tip of the iceberg. The more advanced you go, the more complicated the equations and tools get. But even if you’re an Excel newbie, there are functions available to ease your workload, save you time, and leave you satisfied.