I’ve used Excel, even beyond spreadsheets, for quite some time, and over the years, I’ve naturally developed a few favorite features and shortcuts. They’re probably not the ones you’d expect, though. Many of them sit behind menus, tucked into shortcuts, or hidden in settings that most people never think of exploring.

Once you know they’re there, though, everything becomes faster. Tasks that used to take me minutes now take seconds, and the entire workflow feels less like manual labor. These features aren’t flashy or complicated, but they greatly improve my experience working in Excel.

Consider this a short tour of the things I wish someone had pointed out to me years ago.

F4 to repeat your last action

The fastest way to apply formatting without touching your mouse

Any time you apply a formatting change—bold text, fill color, borders, alignment, and so on—you can press F4 to repeat that same action as many times as you need. It isn’t limited to formatting, either. If you delete a row, you can press F4 to delete another. If you insert a column, select a new location and press F4 again to insert another.

This shortcut works with most one-step actions, including inserting rows or columns, applying cell formatting, or adjusting borders. Instead of right-clicking through menus or moving your mouse back and forth to the ribbon, you press a single key. On my current laptop, I need to press the Fn key in conjunction with F4 because of the keyboard’s configuration. If that feels awkward for you, Ctrl + Y performs the same function.

I discovered this feature years ago, and now I can’t imagine working without it. When I need to format cells scattered across a sheet or insert multiple non-adjacent rows, F4 saves a good amount of time. It can’t repeat multistep actions, like sorting, but for simple one-step actions, it’s incredibly efficient.

F4 only remembers your most recent action, so you need to press it right after completing the task you want to repeat.

The Filled Map

Turn location data into a real map in two clicks

This chart lets you display geographic data by plotting values or categories across regions.

If your data includes geographic information—like countries, states, regions, or postal codes—you can turn it into a visual map in just a few clicks. Simply select your data, then go to Insert -> Maps -> Filled Map. Excel uses its built-in geographic data types to recognize the locations and plot them automatically. The entire process usually takes less than a minute.

Values are represented as color gradients (for example, from lighter to darker shades to indicate low to high performance), while categories are distinguished using distinct colors for separate groups. This allows you to build heat maps for performance data or comparison maps that highlight differences between regions.

Map charts require an online connection because Excel uses Bing’s mapping service for the shapes and boundaries. They’re meant for broad geographic areas, so they cannot map specific addresses or precise coordinates.

I’ve used this to visualize everything from regional sales performance to customer distribution patterns. Essentially, if you have a location and a number, or a location and a category, you can map it. It turns plain spreadsheet data into something far easier to understand and much more visually appealing to show in presentations.

This feature works best when the columns you want to visualize are adjacent to each other, so you may need to rearrange your data accordingly. Regardless of how you rearrange your data, ensure that the column containing your geographical data is the first.

Show All Formulas (Ctrl + `)

One shortcut to audit a sheet without clicking cell-by-cell

If you frequently use Excel templates or work with spreadsheets created by other people, this feature is essential. Press Ctrl + ` (the backtick key, typically located in the top-left corner of your keyboard under the Escape key), and Excel will display every formula in the sheet instead of the resulting values. If you’re on a Mac, the shortcut is Command + `.

This view is incredibly useful for troubleshooting. You can scan entire sections at once to spot inconsistencies, verify that similar cells use the same logic, or find mistakes without selecting each cell individually.

When this mode is enabled, selecting a cell also highlights every referenced cell or range with colored borders, making relationships and dependencies easy to trace visually. Plus, column widths temporarily appear wider to accommodate the longer formula text (though the actual widths of your spreadsheet don’t change).

Showing formulas also removes number formatting, which helps reveal formatting issues. For instance, if a supposed date displays as a serial number, such as 42348, you know it’s the actual date value. Meanwhile, any dates that don’t convert to serial numbers are actually stored as text. This alone can save you a surprising amount of debugging time.

Press Ctrl + ` again to toggle back to the standard view.

Start with an apostrophe to force text entry

When you want Excel to stop helping and keep what you typed

Try typing 1/2 into a cell, and Excel will interpret it as a date and convert it to 01-Feb, even if that’s not what you intend. Excel is always trying to detect patterns and apply formatting automatically, which is helpful until it isn’t. I usually set cell number formats before entering data, but sometimes you just need to control individual cells without adjusting the entire column.

In those cases, type an apostrophe (’) before your entry. Excel will treat everything that follows as text, regardless of its appearance. If you want to store 1/2 as a product code rather than a date, type ’1/2. It’s much faster than changing the cell format when you only need to override Excel’s assumptions a few times.

The apostrophe doesn’t appear in the cell, so your data remains clean. You’ll see it only in the formula bar when you select the cell.

Just remember that any values stored as text won’t behave like numbers in calculations.

Convert your data range into a table (Ctrl + T)

The easiest way to keep your data structured and expandable

You can work with data ranges without converting them to tables, but in most cases, doing so adds unnecessary effort to your workflow.

Tables automatically expand when you add new rows or columns, and any formulas referencing the table adjust themselves to include the new data. They also introduce structured references, which let you write formulas using column names instead of cell addresses. Instead of something like =SUM($B$2:$B$100), you can write =SUM(Sales[Revenue]). Six months from now, you won’t have to remember what column B represented.

Tables also come with helpful built-in features: header filters are enabled by default, optional banded rows expand as your data increases, and you can add a total row that allows you to sum, average, or count values with a single click.

There are cases where a plain range is better, such as when you’re working heavily with dynamic array formulas or collaborating with users on very old versions of Excel. Still, in most everyday situations, I simply highlight the range and press Ctrl + T. It keeps everything structured and saves time as the dataset evolves.

Name Manager (Ctrl + F3)

Keep your formulas readable

Excel’s Name Manager (accessible via Ctrl + F3 or Formulas -> Defined Names -> Name Manager) lets you assign meaningful names to cells, ranges, formulas, or even constant values.

If you frequently reference the same ranges, naming them can make your formulas much clearer. For example, you could name the range N2:N100 as ‘Profit’ and cell S2 as ‘TaxRate.’ Then, your formula becomes:

=SUM(Profit)*TaxRate

Instead of:

=SUM($N$2:$N$100)*$S$2

Which one would you rather interpret six months from now?

To create a name, press Ctrl + F3 to open the Name Manager, click New, choose a descriptive name (like Profit or ProjectCosts), and specify which cells it should reference.

Once defined, you can use that name anywhere in your workbook. The Name Manager provides a central view of all named ranges, their scopes (workbook or worksheet), the references they point to, and any notes you’ve added. This makes it easier to keep your spreadsheet organized as it grows.

You can also define named constants. For example, you could create a name called USD_NGN_Rate and assign it a fixed value, like 0.35.

If the exchange rate changes, you update it once in the Name Manager instead of searching through multiple formulas.

If your workbook already has formulas using cell references, you can convert them to named ranges in Excel by using Formulas -> Define Name -> Apply Names. It took me a while to learn how to utilize Name Manager fully, but it’s been worth the effort.

Small features make the biggest difference when you live in Excel

These aren’t the flashiest Excel features, but they’ve saved me three seconds here, thirty seconds there—time that adds up to hours over the course of a month. I still use Power Query and other advanced tools when I need them, but I wouldn’t give up these smaller efficiencies. They’re the things that make daily spreadsheet work feel less tedious.

Excel is full of little features like this, hidden in plain sight and waiting for the moment someone realizes they need them. If you’ve come across any small-but-mighty Excel tricks of your own, I’d love to hear them.