Important Excel Functionalities/Features for Analyst

Hello there, hope everyone is doing great. I won’t take much of your time just want to let everyone be aware of how important excel is in our life(yes yes excelling in life is also imp but here I am talking about the tool MS-EXCEL :P). Since my graduation there is one skill I have always mentioned confidently in my resume which is MS Excel if somebody would ask me how much you will rate yourself, I would have always said 10/10 because I thought I am an expert in excel, yes you heard it right, I THOUGHT. Only after coming to the corporate world, I realized how much I need to brush up on my excel skills. I didn’t even know that there is so much more in excel than I thought. So I thought there might be many students or professionals who are just going to join the corporate world or have already joined and are struggling with excel. In this article, I will be mentioning all the important detail about excel that one must know despite being a Data analyst, financial analyst, or whatever analysis you are doing. Excel is the bread and butter of most of jobs and for most of the crucial analysis tasks this article is going to be very helpful for your daily excel task, so here is the list of some really important functionalities or features that every analyst must know or they should start learning immediately to save their time at work:

1. PivotTables: PivotTables allow you to quickly summarize and analyze large data sets, making it easier to identify trends and patterns.
2. Keyboard Shortcuts: Excel has a variety of keyboard shortcuts that can save time and improve efficiency. Examples include pressing “Ctrl + C” to copy, “Ctrl + V” to paste, and “Ctrl + Z” to undo.
3. Data Cleaning and Transformation: Excel provides a range of tools for cleaning and transforming data, such as removing duplicates, splitting cells, and converting text to columns.
4. Collaboration: Excel provides features for collaboration, such as sharing workbooks and using comments to communicate with other users.
5. Functions: Excel has a wide range of built-in functions that can help you manipulate and analyze data, including statistical functions, mathematical functions, and text functions.
6. Conditional Formatting: This feature allows you to highlight cells that meet certain criteria, making it easier to identify outliers or anomalies in your data.
7. Data Validation: This feature allows you to create rules that limit the type of data that can be entered into a cell, ensuring data integrity and reducing errors.
8. Charts and Graphs: Excel provides a variety of chart and graph options, which can help you visualize your data and communicate your findings more effectively.
9. Filters and Sorting: These features allow you to quickly and easily sort and filter your data, making it easier to identify patterns and trends.
10. Macros: Macros allow you to automate repetitive tasks, saving time and reducing the risk of errors.
11. VLOOKUP and HLOOKUP: These functions allow you to quickly find data in a table, making it easier to cross-reference data and identify relationships between different data sets.
12. Text-to-Columns: This feature allows you to split data in a single column into multiple columns, which can be useful when working with messy or unstructured data.
13. Goal Seek: This feature allows you to find the input value required to achieve a specific output value, which can be useful when working with models or projections.

Above mentioned are the most important functionalities that you must know hands on, now coming to some really important formulas:

1. SUM: This formula adds up a range of numbers.
2. AVERAGE: This formula calculates the average value of a range of numbers.
3. COUNT and COUNTA: These formulas count the number of cells that contain numeric or non-empty values, respectively.
4. MAX and MIN: These formulas return the maximum and minimum values in a range of numbers.
5. IF: This formula allows you to set up a condition to test if a statement is true or false, and perform different actions based on the result.
6. VLOOKUP and HLOOKUP: These formulas allow you to search for a specific value in a table and return a corresponding value from another column or row.
7. INDEX and MATCH: These formulas allow you to look up a value in a table based on a specified row and column, and return a corresponding value from another column.
8. CONCATENATE: This formula combines two or more text strings into a single cell.
9. LEFT, RIGHT, and MID: These formulas allow you to extract a portion of text from a cell, starting from the left, right, or middle of the text string.
10. SUMIF and SUMIFS: These formulas allow you to sum values in a range based on one or more criteria.
11. AVERAGEIF and AVERAGEIFS: These formulas calculate the average of values in a range based on one or more criteria.
12. COUNTIF and COUNTIFS: These formulas count the number of cells in a range that meet one or more criteria.
13. ROUND and ROUNDUP: These formulas round a number to a specified number of decimal places or to the nearest whole number.
14. PRODUCT: This formula multiplies a range of numbers.
15. QUOTIENT and MOD: These formulas calculate the quotient and remainder when dividing one number by another.

So, this was all about the excel and it’s important functionalities and features.