This week’s hint and tip is about how to use the filtering option within Excel. This is on our Intermediate Excel training course and covers where the filtering option is found and how to use it. We are going to go through it now below.

Where the filtering option is found and how to turn it on

There are two ways to find the filtering option in Excel. The first is go to the Home Tab and click on the sort and filter button. When you click on this button, the filter option can be found on the drop down list. The second is to go to the Data Tab and click on the filter button found in the middle of the ribbon.

To turn the filtering option on, just click on the filter button. This will produce drop down arrows along the top of the columns of your data next to the headings. Clicking back on the button will turn them off. You can’t break your filters! This is a common error people think they can make. If they aren’t there, then it means you have just turned them off.

How to apply filters

To filter in your data, firstly select an active cell in your data. An active cell is any cell that has data in it. Once you have the cell selected, turn on your filters. This will give you your drop down arrows. From here you can select the drop down filter on the column you wish to filter on to see your options. In the drop down menu, there are tick boxes that you can use to filter out data for the specific column. This is the most commonly used method for filtering in Excel, the only difference is when filtering numbers. To filter on a column with numbers in it, it is best to use the number filtering option. This gives more flexibility for filtering with numbers.

The video below shows you how to turn on the filter option and how to apply filters in Excel. Filtering is very powerful in Excel and is useful for only showing part of your data.

Take a look below at the video to find out more and then try it out on your own computer!

We hope you have enjoyed this hint and tip on Excel filtering. Why not take a look at our previous one on nested IF statements?

The post Excel Filtering – a video on how to filter in your data in Excel appeared first on JPL IT Training Ltd.

This week’s hint and tip is about using borders and fill colour in your spreadsheets. This is a section in our Basic Excel training course and both can be used effectively to make your spreadsheets stand out. Both borders and fill colour can be very powerful tools in the Excel package. They can be used for just general improvement of a spreadsheet or to make information stand out. We will now look at both of these options and how you can use them in your spreadsheets.

Borders

Firstly, Borders. A lot of people think that borders are already visible in an Excel spreadsheet however these are borders, they are gridlines!

Gridlines are the grey lines that can be seen around all the cells in your worksheet. These are always here and can be seen as more of a ‘guide’ to show you where one cell ends and another starts.

Borders are different to these. Borders go on top of these gridlines and can be a variety of styles, thicknesses and colours. They are used for making your data stand out a bit more and also for making large amounts of data easier to read.

Fill Colour

Then, Fill Colour. This is also sometimes known as ‘shading’ in other Microsoft Office packages. This is the option where you can fill in the colour of a cell to a specific colour.

A common mistake that people can make is assume that all cells are automatically filled white however they are actually ‘filled’ with no fill. So if you select white as a fill colour it will appear that your gridlines have disappeared!

To solve this issue, just change it to no fill and the gridlines will appear again. Fill colour is used for when you want to highlight a particular cell to bring it to someone’s attention or if you just wanted to add a bit of colour to your spreadsheets.

The video below shows you how to use both borders and fill colour in your spreadsheets.

Watch the video to find out more and then try it out on your own computer!

We hope you have enjoyed this hint and tip, why not take a look at our previous one on Text Manipulation in Excel?

We carry out Excel training Gloucester as well as other cities around the UK and both of these features are found on our Basic Excel course!

If you are interested in Excel training Gloucester or Excel training near you, then please do get in touch!

The post Borders and Fill Colour, do you use them in your spreadsheets? appeared first on JPL IT Training Ltd.

We are particularly active in Gloucestershire offering on site Excel training. Here at JPL we can offer a range of standard Excel courses ranging from Basic to Master Class and all content can be found on our website. We have also recently developed another Master Class Excel course – there used to be just a Master Class Excel Bronze, but now there is also Master Class Excel Silver!

Excel is a package that is often seen as a basic requirement for a lot of people nowadays when they are applying for a job. Excel is ever increasingly becoming a package that businesses use for storing and analysing data for a number of departments within the company. With the use of Excel becoming more important and integrated within a companies daily work it is becoming ever more important for your knowledge of Excel to be kept up to scratch!

A lot of people would probably class themselves as ‘self taught’, that they have picked up their skills and knowledge in Excel through ‘trial and error’ or by someone mentioning how to do something in passing. This often will get you by unless you need to do something a bit harder or if something goes wrong and you need to fix it!

This is where we come in, we have a number of Excel training courses that we run which you can take a look at details of here. We also offer training in other MS Office courses in Word, Access, Outlook, Project and PowerPoint. You can find details for these here on our website.

For more details of the Excel training Gloucestershire that we offer please contact us on 07903 840105 or feel free email us on johnlegge@jplcomputer.co.uk

Worksheet Hint and Tip – Renaming Worksheets

To finish on we thought we would include a little worksheet hint and tip, you can view more hints and tips on our main Hints and Tips page.

In Excel you can rename the worksheet you are working in. By default the name will be Sheet1, Sheet2, etc. These aren’t very informative and so you can rename them to make more sense!

To rename the worksheet, you can either:

1. Double click on the current worksheet name and type over the name and hit Enter once you have given it the new name to save it
2. Right hand click on the worksheet name and select the ‘Rename’ option for the list. Again type over the name and hit Enter once you have given the new name to save it

We hope you liked this worksheet hint and tip, why not take a look at our previous one on the SUM formula in Excel?

The post Excel Training Gloucestershire plus an Excel worksheet hint and tip appeared first on JPL IT Training Ltd.