This document provides 10 Excel skills to help land a job or keep your current one. It discusses functions for counting cells, using IF functions to return true/false results, finding duplicate and unique values with conditional formatting, formatting cells using Format Paint, adding hyperlinks, concatenating cells, calculating workdays between dates, trimming extra spaces from text, and cleaning up charts by smoothing lines and rounding corners.
1. 10 EXCEL SKILLS TO
HELP YOU LAND
YOUR NEXT JOB (OR
KEEP THE ONE YOU
HAVE
By Tweether
2. 4 ways to "Count" in Excel:
◦ COUNT: Counts the # of cells that contain a numeric value only.
◦ COUNTA: Counts the # of cells that contain data in any form.
◦ COUNTBLANK: Counts the # of blank cells with no data.
◦ COUNTIF: Counts the # of cells containing data you define. Examples:
3. ◦ "IF" function:
◦ I've seen IF functions explained in a myriad of ways over the years.
◦ And TBH, they always felt a bit confusing.
◦ They shouldn't be. Think of them like an easy
◦ "true/false" question.
◦ =IF(A1>B1,"True","False")
◦ If "A1" is > B1, we get "True" If <, we get "False"
4. Find Duplicate/Unique Values:
◦ When working with large data sets, it's often useful to be able to identify trends quickly. Which
items are repeated? Which items are unique? Using conditional formatting we can easily
highlight cells based on the criteria we select. Like this:
5. Format Paint:
◦ I use this one––Every. Single. Day. With Format paint, you can copy formatting with a single
click. •Select the cells you'd like to copy •Click the paintbrush •Paste where you want the format
to go. It's that easy.
6. HYPERLINK:
◦ Here's a quick and easy way to add links to documents, webpages, or alternate locations within
a doc: =HYPERLINK("URL","Text to Display") Just paste your specific URL (or file location) and
the text you would like the link to display.
7. CONCATENATE:
◦ Combine the contents of multiple cells into a single cell. Say you have a first name and last
name in separate cells but you'd like the to be combined. One simple formula and you've got
what you need: =CONCATENATE (B4,“ ”,C4) Check it out below:
8. WORKDAY:
◦ Need to tell your customer (or boss) when a job will be done? Easily calculate the time between
your start date and a specified number of "business days" in the future. Automatically exclude
weekends & holidays of your choosing. Like this:
9. TRIM:
◦ Pasting data from an alternate source into Excel often leaves your spreadsheet looking like a
mess. Let's use the TRIM function to clean it up. •Removes extra spaces from text •Leaves a
single space between words •No empty space at the beginning or end
10. CLEAN CHARTS
◦ Clean Charts: Here are a couple of quick tips that will make your charts stand out from the rest.
Smoothing Lines: •Right-click on the line •Format data series •Check "Smooth Line" Round
Corners: • Select Chart • Format Chart Area • Check "Rounded Corners“