Paul has assembled here, in no particular order, a number of "tips" and useful shortcuts to help you get more from Excel. Some of these may be particularly helpful for use with our software, but all are useful for general use.

Most users are likely to find something new here ...

1 Concatenate data ie join data from more than one cell into one cell

This may be particularly useful for use with the Mail Merge and Label Merge products.

You can use the CONCATENATE formula (see more in Excel help), but quicker is to use the & (ampersand) character.

Note: The formula in C2 needs the &" "& so you do not get 'MikeSmith' as one word.

2 Multiple selections

You can select multiple cells to delete in one go, make bold, or whatever - just hold down the Ctrl key whilst clicking each one.

Then you will find you can extend this to select multiple rows and columns by using the same key but clicking on the row/column headers instead of individual cells.

And you can do the same for worksheets - try clicking on various tabs whilst holding down Ctrl. This can be useful for printing multiple worksheets in one go, but be warned, if you have multiple sheets selected and you make changes to or delete a cell or range, it will be effective on all the selected sheets without warning.

3 Shift key (Multiple selections continued)

This is very useful, but you will need to work through the following to see why.

Try this: Open a new blank workbook and click on cell A1. Then hold down a Shift key, and click on cell C7.

Great, you say, it selects the whole block, but I can do that by clicking and holding. So how does this help?

Have you ever had the problem of 'overshooting' with the mouse when you scroll down long spreadsheets? It goes so quickly that you shade in well past the end and have to go back - then you go back too far, and have to go down again ... etc etc.

So now you can click on the start, go to the end, and click the last cell (holding down Shift of course) and it's all shaded in. So that helps, but you still have to find the last cell.

So now try the next section below ...

[Though first we should point out that just as you can use Ctrl to select multiple rows, columns, or even worksheets (see above), Shift works in the same way; so use Ctrl to select multiple individual items, Shift to select from X to Y with everything in between. Note: This functionality also works in many other Windows applications like Windows Explorer for example.]

4 End key

This little (often unnoticed) key simply entitled 'End' is very useful in Excel (US and UK and many other keyboards have this key in a block of keys in the middle of the keyboard near the four arrow keys).

Try the following: In a new blank workbook set up 2 blocks of data like this (the actual numbers and contents do not matter).

Then click on the top cell of the first block (B3 in the above example). Now press and release the 'End' key (see the lower right of your screen shows END). Now press the Down-Arrow key, and you have moved to the end of that block of data (B6 above).

'End' and Down-Arrow then moves you to the start of the next block (B8 above), and then B10.

Now life can be much easier if we put some of these together.

5 Shading in quickly with the keypad

Combining our knowledge from the last 2 sections above, you can quickly shade a whole block of data without the mouse by simply holding down Shift, and then pressing 'End' followed by the Down-Arrow key. And this will work on a block no matter how long, so it can be an easy alternative to shading with the mouse and over-shooting as described above.

So, for example, to shade from cell A1 to cell Y25000, assuming the whole area was one block of data, you simply start at cell A1, then hold down Shift throughout, and press End and Down-Arrow, then End and Right-Arrow. Much quicker than trying to shade such a huge area with the mouse!

6 Other keyboard tips for moving around quickly

Try using these with Shift or Ctrl held down to shade in areas quickly.

• Ctrl+Home - goes to cell A1 (or the upper left cell of a split worksheet or a frozen pane area)
• Home - back to column A (though I always have Transition Navigation Keys checked under Tools | Options, which means Home takes you to cell A1)
• Page Down and Page Up
• Tab key (same as Page Down but to the right); Shift+Tab is the opposite (only if you have Transition Navigation Keys checked under Tools | Options, otherwise these keys simply move you one cell at a time)
• F5 - allows you to type in a cell directly, and helps navigate if you have named ranges - try pressing F5, type in a cell name (eg Y2000), then hold down Shift as you press Enter

7 Ensure my print fits on just 1 page across

Most users will know this screen (from File | Page Setup, or the 'Setup' button in Print Preview):

And most will have played with the 'Scaling' section to get printouts correct.

One of the most useful settings here is as follows:

See the difference?

Select the second option 'Fit to', and instead of using trial and error to find how many pages 'tall' is required, simply click on the box and then use the 'Delete' key to delete the number. By leaving this box blank your printout will fit neatly to just 1 page wide, but use as many pages 'tall' as it requires.