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Andy B's five biggest OOH! moments on an Excel training course.
All trainers live for that moment when someone's face lights up, as they learn something new which will change their working life for the better. This blog lists my 5 biggest such OOH moments from our Excel training courses. How many of these tips do you know?

Posted by Andy Brown on 09 May 2019

In this blog

1 - Copying down by double-clicking
2 - Auto-summing easily
3 - Copying worksheets easily
4 - Quick ways to move between worksheets
5 - Inserting a worksheet

The five biggest OOH moments on Excel training courses

Every trainer lives for it - that "Ooh!" you get when you show a feature hitherto unsuspected, which a delegate knows will change their life forever (even if only in a small way). Here are the 5 biggest ooh moments from our Excel courses. See how many of these you already knew!

1 - Copying down by double-clicking

So you want to copy the formula shown to calculate the total score for all of the archers in the table:

We want to calculate the total score for all of the archers in the list.

Position the mouse button at the bottom right corner of the cell and double-click! This will work whether there are 10 rows to fill (as here) or 10,000.

This looks at the column to the immediate left of the one you're on (so if there is a blank cell in the Outer Red figures for this example, your totals will stop just before this).

2 - Auto-summing easily

Another way to achieve the result shown above is to select the cells shown below:

Select the cells you want to sum, including a blank row (if required) and blank column (as here) where the sums will go.

You can then press Alt + = to automatically insert summation formulae in the right-hand column (and if selected, bottom row).

3 - Copying worksheets easily

Want to take a copy of a worksheet? Most people will right-click and use this menu:

This method does work, but it's not the easiest way.

A much easier way is to hold down the Ctrl key and click and drag on the worksheet name:

The mouse pointer shows a + on it, to prove you're copying and not moving the sheet.

Much easier!

4 - Quick ways to move between worksheets

If you have lots of worksheets in a workbook, it can be a pain moving between them:

You can use the arrow shown to go to the next sheet, but if you've got a lot of worksheets it might take some time to reach the end of the list.

It's often quicker to do what the software suggests!

This message appears when you hover over the arrows to the left of the worksheet tabs. As the captions suggests, you can right-click on the arrows to choose which sheet to go to.

You can then double-click on the sheet you want to select:

Not all of the worksheets were to do with accounts after all ...

You can also hold down the Ctrl key (as the hint suggests) and click on the arrows to go automatically to the last worksheet, although I always forget about this.

5 - Inserting a worksheet

Wise Owl do like a good short-cut key, and one of our favourites is the one to insert a worksheet:

Normally inserting a worksheet involves moving to the worksheet tab, right-clicking and choosing the menu option shown. What a waste of a few milliseconds!

Instead of the above palaver, just press Shift + F11 to insert a worksheet before the one you currently have selected.

The real way to become more efficient in Excel is to learn how to use range names effectively, but for this you'll have to attend our Intermediate Excel or Advanced Excel course (the information covered is slightly beyond the scope of a quick-tip blog like this).

Some other pages relevant to the above blog include:

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