Pssst, Do You Want Some Excel Cheat Codes?

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This article is co-written by Jesper Martin Jensen and Anders Liu-Lindberg

For the past two months, we’ve been writing about how you can power up your Excel game. To some extent, we’ve still only scratched the surface. We haven’t for instance taken a deep dive into how you can use all the formulas Excel offers. We could do that, but we also know that for you to make a change in how you use Excel we can’t overload you with information.

That said, we do want to leave you with one last advice. In fact, five pieces of advice that you can take home and start practising on once you’re done implementing the 15 best practices. We call it the Excel cheat codes because just like any other game Excel also have cheat codes that get you to the end much faster! 

5 Kick-Ass Functions 

To work even smarter in Excel here are five additional functions that you can consider when you’re ready for it. 

1. Protect your model from being opened on another domain: Using this function gives you a different way of protecting your sheet. Instead of using a password, you can restrict your model to a certain domain for instance that used in your company. In that way, only users within your company can open the model and you don’t have to keep track of password distribution.
2. Create different user profiles that automatically adapts the model depending on who opens it: Not all users have the same proficiency level and likely that don’t all need to use the model for the same thing. Creating different user profiles will allow you to restrict certain features from being available or lock certain cells depending on which type of user opens it i.e. modeller or standard user.
3. Hide all Menu tabs and create your own menu: There are tons of menu options in Excel and most likely you only use a few of them. Sometimes you don’t use any and you just want the sheet to show as many cells as possible. That’s made possible both by hiding the menu when you don’t use it or simply customize the menu to only include the features that you most frequently use.
4. Autosave and close if you’ve been inactive for too long: By autosave, we do not mean the usual auto-save. This function is a VBA-built autosave and shut down-function. The function validates on user inactivity. In case of n minutes inactivity, Excel warns you of auto shut down. If no activity is detected within n+x minutes, Excel will save and close the file.
5. Let Windows Task Manager autorun tasks through Excel: Most of us knows about having to do daily or weekly jobs in Excel where repetitive steps must be completed. The repetitive steps can be solved by creating a macro, yet you still need to open the file, run the macro, and save the outcome. With Windows Task Manager you can get around that and simply scheduled Windows to automatically run these tasks. Now there’s not much left for you to do! 

Excel is indeed a great tool for many things and certainly also a tool that’s been over-used for many different purposes. It’s also a tool that millions use but few know how to use well. We hope that these five additional functions can help you to become even more advanced in how you use Excel and increase your productivity further!

It’s time for the game credits 

We’ve reached the end of our Excel series and we’re naturally curious if it has helped you improve your productivity. Let us know in the comments by simply writing “YES” but do expand on it if you’re comfortable by telling us how it helped. As we’ve mentioned we will adapt this series into an eBook and throw in some exercises that you can use to practice and power up your Excel game even further.

The potential is massive and there are almost no limits to the possibilities when you start using Excel fully. It’s on you though to get started and more importantly also come up with a plan on what to use the freed-up time for.

Because that’s the real benefit. Your Excel model is only as useful as the insights it produces, and your insights are only as great as how well you communicate them to your stakeholders to influence their decisions. Don’t forget that changing decisions for the better is the only thing that matters at the end of the day. Excel will help you get there so are you ready to exploit the opportunities that await?

This was the eight article in our Excel series teaching you how to increase your productivity working in Excel. You can find previous articles below.

Are You Ready To Power Up Your Excel Game?

Here Are The Top 7 Mistakes You Make In Excel. Should We Try And Fix Them?

I Use Excel For Everything But Should I?

Excel Is Like The Grown-Up Version Of A Kindergarten Sandbox

15 Must-Have Habits To Master Excel

A Good Excel Sheet Never Starts At A1

The Simple Functions And Techniques That'll Save Your Excel Sheet

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Anders Liu-Lindberg is the co-founder, COO (Chief Operating Officer), and CMO (Chief Marketing Officer) at the Business Partnering Institute and owner of the largest group dedicated to Finance Business Partnering on LinkedIn with more 8,000 members. I have ten years of experience as a business partner at the global transport and logistics company Maersk. I am the co-author of the book “Create Value as a Finance Business Partner” and a long-time Finance Blogger with 40.000+ followers.