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This is one of the 33 lessons from the
Tutorial on Excel

Lesson 1-1: General Tips on Excel

Double Paint Brush

Double-click on the paint brush     to copy a format to many cells or ranges. Select the cell with the format that you want to copy then double-click on the paint brush. When you move to the cell where you want to paste  the format you will notice that a paint brush follows the cursor. Paste  the format to any number of cells or ranges, When it is finished go back to the paint brush on the toolbar and single click on it to deactivate the function.

Entering Dates

To enter today's date in a cell just hold the  CTRL key and press semi-colon( ). To enter the time hold CTRL/SHIFT and press colon (:)

If you want the day's date to appear and change each time you open your spreadsheet, use the formula =Now() formatting the cell to show a date. If you format the cell to show a time, it will show the time when the workbook was last opened.

Too Many Worksheets

If there are more worksheets in your workbook than there is room to show all their tabs at the bottom of the screen, you then left click on one of the arrows     to scroll right and left and find your worksheet. INSTEAD right click on the set of arrows. A list of all your worksheets is  shown. You just click on the one that you want to access. If you have more than 15 worksheets, select     in the list and choose your worksheet from hundreds.

Full Menus

Here is a tip that you will use only once. If you work with a recent version of Excel don't you hate it when going to the menu only a partial list of sub-menus is offered to you? Right click on the menu bar, choose "Customized" then "Options" and check the "Always show full menus" check box.

Zeros

If you have a table full of formulas in your spreadsheet and you don't want to show the "0" go to "Tools/Options/View" and choose to hide them by unchecking "Zero Values" . But if you want to hide only the zeros within the table and not the ones at the end of rows and columns select the inside of the table and go to "Format/Conditional Formatting" and choose the color "white" for the font of the cells where the value is equal to "0" . Learn more on Conditional Formatting.

The Dollar Sign ($)

When you need to copy/paste formulas from one cell to another cell or other cells you must start using the dollar sign to make certain addresses are relative or absolute. To do so you go to the formula bar (the window at the top of the screen where you enter values and formulas) you click before each column or line addresses and you add a $. Instead  click on one of the addresses and click on the " F4" key of your keyboard. Two $ appear. Click again and one $ disappear. Click again and the other $ disappear while  the first one comes back. Click again and there are no $. Click again and they both come back. Learn more about relative and absolute references.

This is one of the 33 lessons from the
Tutorial on Excel