Tips & shortcuts
Each one has its own page — what it does, the keystrokes, and a before/after you can play.
Entry & fill
Type one example and Excel fills the rest of the column by pattern.
Total the cells above or to the left in a single keystroke.
Copy the cell above (or to the left) down a whole selection.
Stamp a static date that won't change tomorrow.
Type once, then drop the same entry into every selected cell in one press.
Start a new line within one cell instead of jumping to the next row.
A list of the allowed answers, enforced at the point of entry.
Restate a column to thousands, or flip every sign, without a helper column.
A free dropdown of everything you've already typed, with no setup at all.
Months down the side when you needed them across the top.
Double-click the little square and it runs to the bottom of the data, however long it is.
And then sort by it — P&L order rather than alphabetical.
Editing & references
Drop the formulas and formatting — keep just the numbers.
Cycle a reference through A1 → $A$1 → A$1 → $A1 while editing.
Leap to the end of a column or row — and add Shift to select everything on the way.
Jump into edit mode and see, in colour, exactly which cells a formula uses.
Select a piece of a formula and see the value it produces — the best debugging trick.
Flip the whole sheet between showing results and showing the formulas behind them.
Leap to cell A1, or to the last used cell, from anywhere in the sheet.
Move to the next or previous tab without touching the mouse.
Step backward through your changes — and forward again if you went too far.
Draw arrows from a cell to its inputs — and to everything that depends on it.
Everyone knows the shortcut. Almost nobody uses the three options that make it safe.
The same key that toggles dollar signs does something completely different outside a formula.
"Number stored as text" is why a column sums to zero, and that triangle is the only warning.
The "this workbook contains links" prompt nobody can explain or get rid of.
The biggest time-saver in Excel, and the easiest way to destroy a workbook.
And deal with the links that follow it home.
Watch the cash balance on the summary tab while you edit assumptions three sheets away.
Threaded comments and old-style notes look similar and behave completely differently.
Formatting
Open the full formatting dialog — number formats, borders, alignment — in one press.
One chord each for currency, percent, or comma style — no ribbon trip.
Make the problems visible without reading a single number.
Looks identical to a merge, and doesn't break sorting, filtering or copying.
Negatives in brackets, thousands without dividing, and a value hidden entirely.
The most common bad PDF in finance, fixed with three settings.
And the double-click that locks the brush on until you stop.
Define input, formula and link once — then restyle the whole model with one edit.
A twelve-month trend beside every account, with no chart objects to maintain.
Tables & data
Turn a range into a structured Table that grows and reads in plain English.
Add or remove the filter dropdowns on your header row.
Select only the blanks, formulas, or constants in one move.
Add or remove whole rows and columns from the keyboard, no right-click needed.
Pin the headings in place so row 300 still tells you what it's looking at.
Tell Excel the answer you want and it finds the input that gets you there.
Sensitivity analysis without copying the model twelve times.
A transaction export becomes a department-by-month summary in about thirty seconds.
One file that shows a board the totals and an analyst the detail.
Exports double up, and a duplicated invoice quietly overstates revenue.
And the hidden second use: forcing text numbers to become real numbers.
By department, then by amount — and without scrambling every row.
A subtotal at every change of department, plus the outline to collapse it.
What makes a model safe to hand to somebody else.
The monthly ritual of deleting the same three columns becomes one click.
Makes a filtered report usable by someone who doesn't know Excel.
Named sets of inputs you can switch between, instead of three copies of the workbook.
Learn the moves here — or let Wauvel run them on your numbers.
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