Become a Microsoft Excel power user with these simple tricks

In today's world, Digital literacy has become really vital in any modern business venture.

Digital literacy is simply

"A person’s ability to perform tasks effectively in a digital environment... Literacy includes the ability to read and interpret media, to reproduce data and images through digital manipulation, and to evaluate and apply new knowledge gained from digital environments.

This also means "the ability to use digital technology, communication tools or networks to locate, evaluate, use and create information." - university of Illinois.

For office workers or prospective office workers looking for enhanced pay and career progression the answer is surprisingly simple - become an Excel power user.

According to a 2015 report, 78% of middle-skill jobs require digital literacy - including the most promising position for pay and job creation.

67% of those roles demand expertise in both Excel and Word.

Make sure your Excel skills help rather than hinder your career prospects.

Here are 5 tricks that every office worker should know.

1. CHARTING

If you're going to present data to stakeholders, then it pays to make it look professional.

The recommended charts tool offers basic visualization, giving stakeholders a clear understanding of data trends. You can show them the bigger picture by placing different charts together onto one sheet.

How to:

Enter data into Excel with column headers, then select

"insert > Chart > Chart Type" .

2. CONDITIONAL FORMATTING

With this tool, you can easily highlight points of interest within your dataset. For instance, you could be recording project efficiency and format cells below 80% to be highlighted in red.

The choices are endless, and you can customize the rules to fit your criteria.

How to:

Select the cell and click

"Home > Conditional Formatting > Add" to determine your formatting.

3. QUICK ANALYSIS

This tool speeds up the process of working with small data sets, minimizing the time spent on creating charts.

After selecting your data, you can access tools like formatting, charts, tables, totals and sparklines.

How to:

Select your data and click on the icon in the bottom right corner to bring up the Quick Analysis menu.

how to use excel

4. AUTOFILL

A huge time saver, and one that many people overlook - the Autofill feature removes the need to manually enter row upon row of data.

With this tool, Excel recognizes patterns within your data and fills in rows or columns automatically.

How to:

Click and hold the lower-right column of the cell and drag down the column.

5. POWER VIEW

An interactive data exploration and visualization tool, power view can quickly collate and analyze large datasets and create interactive, presentation-ready reports.

Compatible with PowerPoint, it's an unbeatable aid for delivering reports.

How to:

Goto "Insert > Reports" .

Cheers!