Tech Types: Are your learners High-Tech, Tech-Confident or Tech-Resistant?

Friday, April 25th, 2025

If you are a Learning & Development or IT Manager, the chances are you might have provided your company’s teams with some IT training workshops. You may have noticed that catering for individuals in a group setting can seem like an impossible task! Is it even possible to create inclusive IT training that caters to […]

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Helpdesk Dependency to Self-Sufficiency!

Thursday, April 3rd, 2025

Take your teams from being highly dependent on the IT helpdesk to being self-sufficient and highly skilled. Are you hearing that your organisation’s IT Helpdesk is overwhelmed? Why is this happening? Helpdesk technicians are busy people, supporting the organisation’s systems, networks, hardware and more. Some are also receiving lots of “can you help me with […]

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IT Training: What do they really need?

Monday, March 10th, 2025

Finding IT training that meets your unique needs can be tough. You might not understand the technical needs of your teams, which makes it hard to explain what training they need to a provider. This is a common challenge for L&D managers, so what questions should you ask your teams, and which should you avoid? […]

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Split Dates and Times into separate columns in Excel and Google Sheets with INT

Wednesday, January 29th, 2025

Welcome to our first Quick Tip of 2025! Today we show you a quick and easy way to split date and time into seperate columns in Excel and Google Sheets by using the INT function. If you’d like to see more hints and tips on how to get the best out of the software and […]

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Add a front cover page in Word and keep page numbering intact

Tuesday, September 10th, 2024

In today’s QuickTip we show you a simple way to add a front cover page to your Microsoft Word document in a way that doesn’t interfere with page numbering in the document footer. If you’d like to see more hints and tips on how to get the best out of the software and apps you […]

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How to send feedback to Microsoft and Google

Tuesday, July 16th, 2024

Here’s something a little different in this week’s Quick Tip – how to send feedback to either Google or Microsoft on their applications, from within the app itself. If you’d like to see more hints and tips on how to get the best out of the software and apps you use every day, take a […]

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An introduction to Google Keep

Tuesday, July 2nd, 2024

This week’s Quick Tip video gives you an overview of Keep, the multi-function note and list management tool within the Google Workspace suite, with a couple of quick pointers on how to use some of the common features. If you’d like to see more hints and tips on how to get the best out of […]

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Ten Tips for working productively in Excel and Google Sheets

Thursday, June 20th, 2024

Working with lists? Use Freeze to fix key columns and rows when you are scrolling

Make sure you’re in the correct cell depending on which app you’re using:

Excel

Click in the cell below the row and in front of the column you want to freeze.
Then View > Freeze Panes > Freeze Panes.

Sheets

Click in the cell in the row and the column you want to freeze up to and including.
Then View > Freeze > Up to row # and Up to column #.

Need to apply the same formatting to non-consecutive cells?

Excel / Sheets

Select the first cell/block of cells, then hold the CTRL key on the keyboard while you select other cells. This also works to select non-consecutive cells for functions such as SUM!

Want to copy formatting from one cell to other cells?

You can do this in an instant – in Excel you use the Format Painter, in Sheets, it’s called Paint Format.

Excel

Select a cell containing the formatting you like. Click on the Format Painter button on the toolbar. Then highlight cells you want to copy the formatting to.

Sheets

Select a cell containing the formatting you like. Click on the Paint Format button on the toolbar. Then highlight cells you want to copy the formatting to.

Need to split data from one column into multiple columns?

Ensure you have blank columns ready for the split data. Select the column to be split. Then:

Excel

Choose Data > Text to columns

choose a separator (space in this case) then click finish

Sheets

Choose Data > Split text to columns

choose a separator (space in this case) then press the Enter key

Copy the contents from the cell above

You don’t need to copy and paste or fiddle around with the mouse, just use a keyboard shortcut:

Excel

Ctrl ‘ (note on a UK/US keyboard this is the apostrophe to the right of the semi-colon key)

Sheets

Ctrl D

View two places in a workbook at once

Excel

You can either :

a) Split the view of the current worksheet in two by highlighting a column or row then clicking View > Split

you can now scroll the two parts of the workbook separately

or –

b) View anywhere in the workbook, including a different worksheet, by having two windows open side by side – click View > New Window,

then View – Arrange All

two copies of the workbook now appear in different windows that can be navigated independently

Sheets

There are no menu options in Sheets as there are in Excel, how there is a simple solution to this – you can replicate either of the above by simply having two browser windows open at once side-by-side, with the same URL in each!

Editing keyboard shortcuts

Excel / Sheets

if you don’t know this one you really ought to…

Ctrl X to cut

Ctrl C to copy

Ctrl V to paste

(these work on most other apps too – if you right-click you’ll usually see them appear as options)

Clear formatting from cells

Excel

In the Home tab of the ribbon click Clear – Clear Formats

Sheets

From the menu select Format – Clear Formatting

Select from a cell to the end of a row or column in the current data set

Excel / Sheets

Click on the starting cell, then hold the Shift & Ctrl keys and press the relevant arrow key (up, down, left or right) to select the cells. It will stop the selection when it reaches the end of the data set or hits a gap.

(Example 1: user has selected cell D6 and pressed Shift Ctrl ⇒)

(Example 2: user has selected cell D6 and pressed Shift Ctrl ⇓)

Select the whole data set

Excel / Sheets

Click anywhere in the data and press Ctrl A on the keyboard to select the entire data set

Bonus Tip – more keyboard shortcuts!

• Excel

  Pressing Alt allows you to access any visible menu command by following the on-screen prompts to navigate to a menu tab then a command.

  Step 1: press Alt once to show the menu tabs (and other options) that can be selected by pressing the appropriate key

  

  Step 2: after pressing a key (H for Home in the above example) to choose a menu tab, you’ll now see the menu commands that can be accessed with the appropriate key(s)

  

  Sheets

  Pressing Ctrl / (forward slash not backslash!) brings up a list of all keyboard shortcuts that you can turn on and access at any time.

  

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It can be surprisingly easy to save yourself a bit of time and effort in the workplace just by making use of some of the many brilliant tools that are available in spreadsheet apps. Not everyone uses them (yet!) but they can help everybody work more efficiently. Here are our ten tips for working productively […]

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How to add checklists to tasks in Microsoft Planner

Tuesday, June 18th, 2024

Our Top Tip this week shows you a simple way to structure your projects in Microsoft Planner by adding checklists to your tasks. If you’d like to see more hints and tips on how to get the best out of the software and apps you use every day, take a look at our YouTube channel. […]

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How to open a Google Slides file in presentation view

Monday, June 10th, 2024

Today’s Top Tip gives you a quick and easy way to tweak a URL so you can open a Google Slides file in slideshow presentation view. If you’d like to see more hints and tips on how to get the best out of the software and apps you use every day, take a look at […]

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