8 Skills That Prove You’re Actually an Excel Expert

It's rare to see an office job these days that doesn't require some type of Excel experience. But who is actually classified as an Excel expert? People who know these skills, that's who! We've outlined the advanced Excel skills you need to learn and quickly boost yourself to expert status. 

Fight your fear of spreadsheets and increase your chances of getting that dream job by learning these 8 Excel functions. 

1. Using advanced formulas

Formulas are the key to being an Excel expert. We all know the SUM formula, but there are even more formula tricks up the Excel sleeve. Learn to write and combine formulas, like SUMIFS or SUMPRODUCT, as well as the LOOKUP formula. Check out a few advanced (but easy!) formulas here.

2. Conditional Formatting

Conditional formatting allows you to highlight very specific information other formulas will not allow. For example, if you need to highlight the top 10 percent of employees based on performance without actually going through manually to find and highlight them yourself, you can do so with conditional formatting. Learn 15 advanced forms of conditional formatting here. 

3. Using the fill function

Convert your excel worksheet to a PDF with the fill function. If you want to convert just one section of an entire spreadsheet, you could simply copy and paste. But you're an Excel expert now! To make it easier, faster and more impressive, use the “Fill Across Sheets” tool. You'll never go back to copying-and-pasting again. Learn how to use the fill function here. 

4. Protecting your sheet

Learn to protect your work from being edited in a way that hitting “save” simply won’t. While you trust your coworkers and your boss, you never know who may make a mistake and alter your hard work in a way that will cost you time and energy. Prevent any further edits from being made to your work by selecting rows, columns, or an entire sheet and clicking the protection tab. In an even more advanced protection level, you can give only certain people the ability to edit your document. You'll never need the Command Z function again. Learn to protect your sheet with these instructions. 

5. Customizing the ribbon

If you're tired of having to switch from one tab to another to search for specific commands, simply customize the ribbon. It's a simple, yet highly unknown tool. Create your own custom tabs for easy access and quicker work completion. Learn this skill here. 

6. Using custom views

Avoid the tragic scenario of finally finishing a spreadsheet only to discover it’s been scaled incorrectly for printing. Custom views will prevent this common error from happening by recording your past print settings and reapplying them to your current spreadsheets. Learn how to use custom views here.