The Near Future #VALUE Series

This blog covers Excel financial modelling topics for basic to advanced users. We look at issues relevant to all industries and cover specific Project Finance topics, such as debt optimisation.

TUESDAY TIPS: 15 shortcuts to supercharge your Excel efficiency

While I’m no shortcut absolutist, I do know that you can greatly improve your financial modelling efficiency by learning a few shortcuts by heart. I have compiled a list of my top 15 shortcuts – if you master these, you will increase your Excel speed exponentially.

TUESDAY TIPS: Using Excel’s Camera functionality to create live snapshots

The Camera functionality in Excel allows you to take a snapshot of a section in your Excel file and paste it elsewhere as a live picture. The pasted picture remains linked to the source data, which means that it is continuously updated.

The Lesser Spotted Styles Manager

The Styles Manager allows you to save pre-defined styles in the back-end of an Excel file, enabling any user of the file to access and apply consistent styles across the workbook.

TUESDAY TIPS: Using Paste Special to scale values or change sign

While the Paste Special function in Excel is widely used to paste only selected properties of a copied range, this menu offers some powerful additional functionality. In this post, we discuss how to use Paste Special to scale numbers or change sign.

TUESDAY TIPS: Using Excel’s New Window functionality to view sheets side-by-side

This functionality does exactly what it says on the tin: it opens an additional ‘window’ into your Excel workbook. This allows you to look at different sections / sheets in the same file simultaneously.

How not to Excel: an Introduction

For the inaugural edition of the Near Future #VALUE series, we’ve consulted our little black book and compiled a list of our least favourite Excel practices. Some of these are obvious transgressions while others might be more contentious.