Timelines - New Feature in Excel 2013

These days everybody boasts of a massive spreadsheet. But almost no one needs all the data at same time. We are always filtering data for latest quarter, 6 months starting Mother’s day or 8 weeks from November 1st etc. Of course, you can use auto-filter and select all the dates. But it is a pain.

Thanks to Timelines,  filtering for dates is a breeze. You can add timelines for any date column in a pivot table / pivot chart. I am sure your clients & bosses will love it.

Flash Fill - Microsoft Office Excel 2013

Imagine Flash (the super hero, not browser add-in) is using Excel to extract the middle names of all his villains. Now, flash being flash, do you think he will slowly type out the middle names one at a time? Of course, he can learn Excel formulas and do it in one stroke. But he is too busy running around & saving earth. So, obviously he would use Flash Fill.

Flash Fill works almost like magic. It looks at what you are typing and sees if there is any pattern in it (based on adjacent columns etc.) and then suggests a fill down option. See this demo.

Shortcut Key : Press CTRL+E to activate flash fill.

Autonumbering in Excel 2013

It is often useful to number the rows in an Excel spreadsheet as a means to help organize your data, much in the same way that column heading are added.

There is very quick and simple way to number rows, and it doesn’t involve any math formulas or special tricks. Let’s begin with the example shown in Picture One.

Figure 1 - Excel with Filled Series

Guidelines

Step #1) – Enter a “1” cell A1 and a “2’ in cell A2.

Step #2) – Highlight cells A1 and A2. A small black square will appear in the lower right corner of the highlight area.

Step #3) – Set your cursor on this small black square, and a black plus sign (┼) will appear. Drag the plus sign down to highlight the cells below cell A2 in column A.

When you release the cursor, the selected cells will be automatically numbered.

The autonumber feature has can be used in several other ways. For example, you can number your rows in increments of any number. To begin, just number cell A1 as 5 and A2 as 10, and then repeat steps 2 and 3.

In addition, you can use the autonumber feature with dates. Let’s assume you want to create a reminder list for a report that is due once a week. Type the first date in cell A1 and the second date in cell A2. Repeat Steps 2 and 3, and you will get a result.