Excel is the big name in spreadsheet applications. It’s been a staple piece of software for many years, and a huge number of businesses use it. You might have been using it for a long time, especially as it’s something that many use at school, but there are always new things that you can learn. If your business uses Excel, you can always think of ways to get more from it. As well as learning different functions and formulas, there are a few tricks and tips that you can use to make your Excel use more beneficial to your business. Here are some of the useful things you can do.

Collaborate Using Excel Online

More than one person often needs to work on an Excel workbook. No one wants to have to email files back and forth or have lots of copies of the same spreadsheet. If you need to work with other people, Excel Online makes it easier to share and collaborate. It’s free to use, so there’s no reason not to try it out. It also makes it easy to access the files that you need from anywhere, so you can get your work done wherever you are.

Keeping Workbooks Secure

Security should be important for any files and data that you keep. Whether you have information about your sales or you’re keeping your customers’ personal data, you need to protect it. If you want to take Excel data security seriously, you can do a few things to make it happen. Using passwords to protect your workbooks is one of the simple steps that you can take to get started. Check that your spreadsheet coding is secure, and that you have security policies in place for everyone to follow. You can provide training and education for staff so that they all know how to maintain security.

Speeding Up Excel

Time is of the essence when you’re doing business. You don’t want to waste precious minutes waiting for Excel to do something that you’ve told it to do. Obviously, using various functions and formulas helps you to work faster. You don’t need to spend too long repeatedly putting in similar information or doing the same sums. You can also speed up Excel and get it to calculate faster. Simple things like closing other programs can help, and you can also make sure that Excel is using all available processors. Go to File, Options, Advanced and then Enable multi-threaded calculations, followed by Use all processors on this computer.

Linking Workbooks

Sometimes you want to link more than one workbook together. By linking two workbooks, you can make sure that data in one workbook can be used in another one. To connect two workbooks, you can select the Data tab, then choose Get Data, From File and From Workbook. Find the workbook you want in the Import Data window and select the table or worksheet you want, then click load or edit.

You can make more out of Excel, whether you use it on your own or others in your business use it too.