Have you ever worked late and wished that there was someone to talk? Maybe even someone who could help you do your work? Did you know that Excel can actually speak? And it's a really diligent co-worker, too. Making Excel speak can come in handy if you need someone to read numbers to you while you check them off of a report for the purposes of reconciling the books. It can also recite poetry, but maybe we’ll get to that in another blog…

You might be really excited by now and enthusiastically asking, "How do you make Excel speak?" Remember when we went over customizing the Quick Access Toolbar? We’re going to use that knowledge now to create a shortcut, and then you will have that person - oh okay...that A.I. - that can read numbers to you while you're doing all that reconciling.

For several months now, I've been providing you with tips and tricks to help you use Excel more intelligently and efficiently. We've looked at Auto Filters in order to be smart about filtering and sorting data, we've played with grouping as an intelligent alternative to hiding - and losing - rows and columns, we've seen what more the fill handle can do, and we've had fun with formulas.

How much extra time do you spend clicking back and forth between the tabs on the ribbon in Excel? Are there things you do often enough that having a simple shortcut to them would be a huge time saver? For example, remember the previous Excel Tips for freezing panes, grouping (rather than hiding), and using the Format Painter? All of these and more can be added to the Quick Access Toolbar in Excel, giving you almost instant access to the features you use on a routine basis. Here's how.

After reading last week's blog post on the IF formula, perhaps you started browsing through other Logical Functions using the fx button in the formula bar. If so, you might have noticed that there are several different IF functions. These are useful, say, for IF you want to add together a list of values based on a specific criteria. Or what IF you want to count data based on a specific criteria or even find the average? Here are some examples of what you can do with the SUMIF, COUNTIF, and AVERAGEIF functions in Excel. In the first two columns I show samples, the next column is a description of the formula, then a view of the formula, and, finally, the formula results in the last column.

The IF formula is considered a Logical Function in Excel, but sometimes it can seem anything but logical. Years ago, I created a cheat sheet in Excel for IF formulas that has helped me, and so I want to share it here with you.

I’m sure you’ve all been working in Excel at some point or another and wanting to accomplish something specific. You know there must be a formula that does what you want, but you don’t have a clue what the formula is. Luckily, there is a way to search for formulas in Excel. Start by re-familiarizing yourself with the fx button in the formula bar:

Remember early last month when I showed you IFERROR, which you can use to hide those error formulas we’ve all seen at one time or another? It's unpleasant to have to look at them, but have you ever really wanted to know what the errors actually mean? Here’s a handy little table that shows exactly what it means when you do see those errors - right before you correct or hide them.

Excel's IFERROR function returns a custom specified result when a formula generates an error, and it presents a standard result when no error is detected. IFERROR is an easy way to hide formula errors without using more complicated and nested IF statements (blech!).

Are you constantly updating and changing the date on your reports? Just because time keeps going by doesn't mean that you should have to do a bunch of manual changes (or worse...forget to do them). There are several different date functions built to save you time.

Here's a super simple one that can yield super results. Do you ever watch advanced Excel users zip around their spreadsheets so fast that you have no idea how they are doing it? Well, instead of navigating with your mouse and selecting items from the menu there, is probably a keyboard shortcut that can save you time and give you this same super-Excel-ability.