technologybaba

Ever wondered, how that one guy in the office preps up spreadsheets so quickly? He’s barely touched the mouse and he’s still zapping away through the lines of data, updating them in bulk.

Do you ever get that feeling, wish you too could display your prowess ?

Well look no further –  below is the list of Excel Short-cuts. A list of key combinations and what they do.

Now You too can impress others around you !

KEY	ACTION
ENTER	Complete a cell entry and move down in the selection
ALT+ENTER	Start a new line in the same cell
CTRL+ENTER	Fill the selected cell range with the current entry
SHIFT+ENTER	Complete a cell entry and move up in the selection
TAB	Complete a cell entry and move to the right in the selection
SHIFT+TAB	Complete a cell entry and move to the left in the selection
DELETE	Delete the character to the right of the insertion point, or delete the selection
CTRL+DELETE	Delete text to the end of the line
Arrow keys	Move one character up, down, left, or right
HOME	Move to the beginning of the line
F4 or CTRL+Y	Repeat the last action
SHIFT+F2	Edit a cell comment
CTRL+SHIFT+F3	Create names from row and column labels
CTRL+D	Fill down
CTRL+R	Fill to the right
BACKSPACE	Edit the active cell and then clear it, or delete the preceding character in the active cell as you edit cell contents
CTRL+SHIFT+ENTER	Enter a formula as an array formula
ESC	Cancel an entry in the cell or formula bar
CTRL+A	Display the Formula Palette after you type a function name in a formula
CTRL+SHIFT+A	Insert the argument names and parentheses for a function after you type a function name in a formula
CTRL+K	Insert a hyperlink
ENTER (in a cell with a hyperlink)	Activate a hyperlink
F2	Edit the active cell and position the insertion point at the end of the line
F3	Paste a defined name into a formula
SHIFT+F3	Paste a function into a formula
F9	Calculate all sheets in all open workbooks
CTRL+ALT+F9	Calculate all sheets in the active workbook
SHIFT+F9	Calculate the active worksheet
= (equal sign)	Start a formula
ALT+= (equal sign)	Insert the AutoSum formula
CTRL+; (semicolon)	Enter the date
CTRL+SHIFT+: (colon)	Enter the time
CTRL+SHIFT+” (quotation mark)	Copy the value from the cell above the active cell into the cell or the formula bar
CTRL+` (single left quotation mark)	Alternate between displaying cell values and displaying cell formulas
CTRL+’ (apostrophe)	Copy a formula from the cell above the active cell into the cell or the formula bar
ALT+DOWN ARROW	Display the AutoComplete list
ALT+’ (apostrophe)	Display the Style dialog box
CTRL+1	Display the Format Cells dialog box
CTRL+SHIFT+~	Apply the General number format
CTRL+SHIFT+$	Apply the Currency format with two decimal places (negative numbers appear in parentheses)
CTRL+SHIFT+%	Apply the Percentage format with no decimal places
CTRL+SHIFT+^	Apply the Exponential number format with two decimal places
CTRL+SHIFT+#	Apply the Date format with the day, month, and year
CTRL+SHIFT+@	Apply the Time format with the hour and minute, and indicate A.M. or P.M.
CTRL+SHIFT+!	Apply the Number format with two decimal places, thousands separator, and minus sign (–) for negative values
CTRL+SHIFT+&	Apply the outline border
CTRL+SHIFT+_	Remove outline borders
CTRL+B	Apply or remove bold formatting
CTRL+I	Apply or remove italic formatting
CTRL+U	Apply or remove an underline
CTRL+5	Apply or remove strikethrough formatting
CTRL+9	Hide rows
CTRL+SHIFT+( (opening parenthesis)	Unhide rows
CTRL+0 (zero)	Hide columns
CTRL+SHIFT+) (closing parenthesis)	Unhide columns
F10 or ALT	Make the menu bar active, or close a visible menu and submenu at the same time
TAB or SHIFT+TAB (when a toolbar is active)	Select the next or previous button or menu on the toolbar
CTRL+TAB or CTRL+SHIFT+TAB (when a toolbar is active)	Select the next or previous toolbar
SHIFT+F10	Show a shortcut menu
ALT+SPACEBAR	Show the program icon menu (on the program title bar)

Has it ever happened to you – that you’ve requested a piece of information from your colleague, manager, client, etc and they’ve just sent you a screen grab (an image ) of the piece of information.

Now if the requested information is large or has data with numbers, then this just only increases the task of you having to manually type down each piece of information / number and double or even triple check to ensure that you’ve not missed out anything or incorrectly typed / transposed the digits / characters. And there you are at your wits ends – (of course you could once again ask for the data to be sent in a required format – however that may put you in an awkward position). At such times you just wish you were simply able to copy & paste the data from the screen grab (image ) – this would make life so much easy. Well – this is where OCR – comes into play.

 

OCR (Optical Character Recognition) – as defined on Wikipedia  is the mechanical or electronic conversion of images of typewritten or printed text into machine-encoded text. To put it in layman terms – the ability to copy typewritten or printed text from images and then be able to paste it into any other application like word, excel, email clients etc.

 

Now there are various software available in the market / online which provide OCR – however you will have to buy these and then there is always the cost factor.

Here is where the Microsoft® OneNote® comes in handy. Bundled as part of the Microsoft Office Suite, this is an extremely power packed tool for note taking, collaboration and collating data.

Amongst the various features available with OneNote – its OCR feature “Copy Text From Picture” is fantastic.

 

And here is the text:

CASE_ID DESCRIPTION
52 Boss monitor cracked
54 Tea samovar defect
53 Vacuum server inside
51 Printer toner cartridge
56 Switch mouse to USB
55 Coffee machine defect

Again, the field of OCR is an evolving one and hence at times depending on the Font of the text or the clarity of the character in the image file – an “O” could be replaced with a “0”, an “l” for a “1” and so on and so forth. No system is perfect and OneNote does get a majority of the work done.

 

The second key feature of OneNote that impressed me a lot and one which I use so frequently is its ability to take screen grabs aka the Print-Screen function.

This feature can be activated by starting up One-Note and then Clicking the Windows Key()and S.

The moment you do this the Screen is covered by a transparent layer and a cross-hair (+) is displayed. Then all you do is keeping the left mouse key pressed – you drag the cross-hair (+) to select the part of screen which you want to Grab. The moment you release the left mouse key – it takes a snapshot of the screen over which you have dragged the cross-hair.

If you are doing this for the very first time – then OneNote gives a pop-up window asking you the section/book into which you want to save the screen grab or do you want to just keep it on the system clipboard and then make the image available to be inserted (pasted) into any word/ excel / rich text editor / email editor etc.

Learn more on What’s new in OneNote 2013 !

 

Techno-stu!!!