When looking at the current year’s data, Bill starts to notice that the membership numbers this year might be the lowest since the start of the decade. He’s collected data for this year in one Microsoft Excel sheet, and he has meticulously organized the data for the past 10 years in separate sheets, all formatted in the same style. Apply VLOOKUP to organize data across different sheets Bill wants to compare attendance numbers for student government meetings over the past few years. She can simply select the data, click “Insert,” then click “Recommended Charts.” Then she can scroll through the selections and click on one to see a representation of that data. This tool will show Bernadette immediately which data representation model will be most effective. Recommended Charts is a tool that can give college students using Excel an idea of what their data may look like visually. She knows she wants to use some sort of graph or chart but is unsure which might be the best to incorporate. Use Recommended Charts to visualize dataīernadette is creating a presentation for a big classroom assignment and wants to make sure her insights are fully understood by the rest of the class.
Below are specific Excel tips that students can use, as well as hypothetical examples of how those tips can be applied in a university setting. But for all college students, regardless of major or career path, these particular tips should help throughout their academic career. Students pursuing liberal arts degrees may find themselves using Excel less often and with less rigor. Students majoring in data- and analytics-driven fields might need to learn dozens of Excel functions before they graduate. These Excel tips and tricks for college students may be more beneficial to some students than to others, depending on the individual’s degree and career ambitions. This article will also show college students which Excel tips and tricks can be used to help them stand out in internships and entry-level jobs, as well as common Excel mistakes and mishaps to avoid.Ĭhapter 1: Excel Tips and Tricks to Use at School
The following Microsoft Excel tips and tricks for college students can help users better organize and understand their data, and in turn, make a stronger impact in their classes, campus activities, and future professional and academic careers. However, despite its popularity and commonplace usage in professional, personal, and academic settings, many users don’t know about some of the powerful and helpful tools and processes that can better build charts, identify trends, and organize and interpret data. Originally released in 1985, Excel has held its popularity throughout the decades and remains a widely used program for organizing information in digital spreadsheets. There are many digital tools that college students can use to organize that data and information, but one of the most useful is Microsoft Excel.
From group assignments that are crucial to maintaining a strong GPA to time-consuming leadership positions within university organizations, many of these responsibilities require them to gather and organize large quantities of data and information, such as lists of people to recruit for a new club, pertinent data or research points for a class project, or an organized budget of how to best allocate their limited funds for that semester. Microsoft Excel Tips & Tricks for College StudentsĬollege students routinely manage an abundance of responsibilities.