In office work there are two programs that are used the most: Word and Excel. Being good with these two programs does not mean neither taking a European license which is a certificate without practical meaning, nor knowing how to use every single option of Office programs.
The important thing is to know how to use some key functions of drafting documents and working with spreadsheets, in order to be fast and capable in the most frequent daily operations.
Here are 4 basic operations you can do with Word and Excel, which integrate other guides already written in this blog.
1) We have already explained, regarding Excel, 4 things to be able to do to become good with spreadsheets .
On this occasion we feed that article talking about the automatic filling of the cells which is an important operation to know in order to work at every level.
To use automatic filling, simply type a number in a cell and the following one immediately below.
Then press the mouse on the corner of the second cell, where there is a small square highlighted, and drag downwards keeping pressed to see that the other cells fill with sequential numbers.
The sequences can be numbers, dates or even more complex formulas.
For example, if you have several columns of numbers, you can average all the values of that column by writing the relative formula in the lower cell.
To average the numbers of the other columns now just use the automatic filling system, dragging the square in the empty cells next to it to make the same calculation at the bottom of each other column as well.
When you release the mouse after dragging the corner of the filled column onto the empty ones, you will have the average of the numbers for each cell.
To learn more about Excel's automatic fill, you can read the very complete Microsoft site guide.
2) Easily manage data with the pivot table
It is also worth remembering how pivot tables are made, which are absolutely indispensable on Excel.
The pivot table is accessible under the " Insert " menu.
If you click on the pivot table icon after highlighting an entire data table (including headers), the tool analyzes the data and takes them to a new sheet where you can manipulate the columns in various ways.
It becomes possible to select the columns of data to be analyzed and choose how to manipulate them, for example for averaging.
Using a pivot table saves a lot of time so you can use functions automatically.
3) Now let's move on to Microsoft Word, the most used program in the world to write documents.
Writing is not difficult, but formatting the text and rendering it in a certain way on the sheet can drive you crazy.
There are two things you need to be able to do with Word: the management of headers and page layout and text formatting.
Headings are important for making paragraph headings all the same in the document.
Designing headings in Word is important to not having to redo them every time for every new document.
Headers can be formatted from the "Insert" menu by choosing the "Header" icon.
Using headers, you can edit all the pages of a document in one go.
This help page explains how to insert document headers and footers.
4) Page Layout Management
Another thing that every person who works with Word needs to know is how to set up and preview the format of a page in a document.
Some of the page layout related tools are on the " Insert " menu.
From here you can add "Page numbers" to automate and manage page numbering.
On the "Page layout " menu there are various formatting options, to manage the margins automatically.
The page border options, on the other hand, allow you to manually change the margins of the document left and right.
Regarding Word, I refer to two other guides of this blog on the essential notions to know and the most important operations to be able to use:
- 5 useful functions to use Word in a professional and fast way
- Word text formatting guide: styles, sections and paragraphs
