The slicer will show up on your worksheet, appearing one column wide with just a few items showing.

Here are 10 of the best.

Note: Keyboard shortcuts will work for the 2016 versions of Excel, including Mac; those were the versions tested.

And many of the query options in Excel 2016s data tab come from the Power Query add-in for Excel 2010 and 2013.

So if youve got Power Query on an earlier version of Excel on Windows, a lot of these tips will work for you as well, although they may not work on Excel for Mac.) 1.

Use a shortcut to create a table Tables are among the most useful features in Excel for data that is in contiguous columns and rows.

Tables make it easier to sort, filter and visualize, as well as add new rows that maintain the same formatting as the rows above them.

In addition, if you make charts from your data, using a table means the chart will automatically update if you add new rows.

If youve been creating tables from your data by going to the Excel ribbon, clicking Insert and then Table, theres an easy keyboard shortcut: After first selecting all your data with Ctrl-A (command-shift-spacebar for Mac), turn it into a table with Ctrl-T (command-T on Mac).

Bonus tip: Make sure to rename your table to something related to your specific data, instead of leaving the default titles Table1 or Table2.

Your future self will thank you if you need to access that information from a new, more complex workbook.

Add a summary row to a table You can add a summary row to a table in the Design ribbon on Windows or the Table ribbon on a Mac by checking Total Row.

Although its called Total Row, you can select from a variety of summary statistics, not just a total sum: count, standard deviation, average and more.

While you could certainly insert this information into a spreadsheet manually with a formula, putting the info in a Total Row means its attached to your table but will stay in the bottom row regardless of how you then might choose to sort your table data.

This can be quite handy if youre doing a lot of data exploration.

2017 Excel Fast Fill Full Column By

That will give a reference to the full column by name -- useful if you later add more rows to the table, because you wont have to readjust a more specific reference such as B2:B194.

Note: Its important to make sure your cursor looks like a down arrow before you click on the column name.

If your cursor looks like a cross when you do so, youll get a reference to just that lone cell, not to the whole column.

Whether or not your data is in a table, there are a couple of handy selection shortcuts you can use: Shiftspacebar selects an entire row and Ctrlspacebar (or controlspacebar for a Mac) selects an entire column.

Note that if your data isnt in a table, these selections go beyond available data and include any empty cells beyond.

If you want to select an entire column thats not in a table with just the cells that have data in them, put your cursor in a column next to it, hit Ctrl-down arrow, use the right or left arrow key to move to your desired column, and then hit Ctrl-Shift-up (use command instead of Ctrl on a Mac).

This can be handy if your data column is quite long.

Filter table data with slicers Excel tables offer drop-down arrows next to each column header for easy sorting, searching and filtering.

However, trying to filter data with that small drop-down when youve got a large number of items can be somewhat cumbersome.

Several of the presenters at the Data Insights Summit suggest using slicers instead.

Anybody who sends you a pivot table without slicers, you should teach them slicers in 30 seconds.

People love slicers, said Indiana University professor Wayne Winston, who also advises Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban on basketball stats.

2017 Excel Fast Fill Windows 10 Enterprise But

Further reading: Key features of Windows 10 Enterprise But while slicers were originally developed for pivot tables, they now work on regular tables as well (and have since Excel 2013 on Windows).

This is actually more useful, Winston argued.

2017 Excel For Mac Fast Fill