If you’ve ever had to do any book keeping or data entry, you most likely have used Microsoft Excel. Excel is a powerful tool for any business to help you efficiently analyze and interpret large amounts of data. This is a program that in the right hands can make life much easier. Someone once said, “With great power comes a great way to enter data” …or something like that. Having an understanding of Excel can save you time and give you much more control over data entry. Here are a few key ways using the “control function” to be more efficient in Excel. We will start out a little easier and gear it up from there!

• Copy and Pasting Data (Crtl + C), (Crtl + V): Use Crtl + C to copy cells and Crtl + V to paste the cells you copied.

• Undoing Last Action (Crtl + Z): This is probably the function I use the most!  We all make mistakes in Excel. Say you accidentally deleted an entire column in your spreadsheet, no need to panic just hit this combination of buttons to undo the previous step(s)!

• Searching for Data (Crtl + F): When looking for a certain name, number, amount or any other type of data in your spreadsheet, hit Crtl + F and a search box will pop-up. Next, enter the information you are searching for and it will bring you to the data based on the search criteria.

• Fast Row Selection (Shift + Spacebar): Hitting these two keys allows you select an entire row of data.

• Fast Column Selection (Crtl + Spacebar): Similar to above, this combination allows you to select an entire column of data.

• Move to Edge of Data Region (Crtl + Arrow Button): When you hit these keys you can easily navigate to the edge of the current region of data. That means instantly moving to the top and bottom of columns or to the left and right in rows of data. Fun fact: in a blank spreadsheet it take less than a second to travel more than one million rows by hitting Crtl + Down Arrow!

• Extend Selection to the Edge of Data (Crtl + Shift + Arrow Button): With these buttons you can easily select entire rows/columns of data at once. Hold down these keys and it will shoot you to the next blank cell in a row or column. You can select a massive amount of data at once with these three buttons!

These are just a few of the simple ways to increase your efficiency in Excel.  Don’t be afraid to try new functions and tricks in excel because you can always just hit Crtl + Z if something goes wrong.