Software and apps

Displaying hidden formatting

Format Painter

Change font, style, point size and all formatting, in one go to match pre-existing text

Many times in Word you have copied and pasted something into your document only to find it is in a different font, size or is in bold or italics or some completely different format. Format painter can copy the format of your existing text and then 'paint' it onto the new text you've just copied in. This can save massive amounts of time if you are not sure how the imported text has been formatted.

Word Tutorials 

Below are a list of Word guides currently available. If you have a need for a tutorial that doesn't exist yet then please email ITSkills@chi.ac.uk to request it.

Conditional Formatting

Conditional formatting is a feature that has a variety of uses. Mainly surrounding different ways of displaying data corresponding to the value found within the cell or range of data. This can help you visualise the data faster than reading off the values using colour schemes and icon sets to show the quantities or differences between values more effectively than numbers would at a glance. 

Wrap Text & Merge and Centre

Excel Tutorials

Below are a list of Excel guides currently available, these are a work in progress and will be added to as time goes on. If however you have a need for a tutorial that doesn't exist yet then please email ITSkills@chi.ac.uk to request it.

Beginner

• Excel Quick Selection Techniques  

• Resizing Columns and Rows 

• Number Formatting 

Flash fill and the fill handle

The fill handle can be used in a variety of ways that may save you time. From repeating sequences or repeating data to repeating a formula over a large area. 

The fill handle is the name given to the green dot found on the bottom right corner of the selected cell/s.

Relative cell references and absolute cell references

Cell references are used in almost all functions and they interact differently with the Auto-fill handle depending on what type of reference you have used:

Basic functions formulae (SUM, AVERAGE, COUNT, MAX & MIN)

This page will cover the 5 basic functions found in the auto-sum drop-down menu:

• SUM

• AVERAGE

• COUNT NUMBERS

• MAX

• MIN

What is a Mathematical operator?

This page will guide you through using Excel to create basic mathematical operations. This is very similar to creating a function or formula except that we are not using the function's operative such as (=Sum) or (=Average) or any of the other function operative.

If we wanted the sub-total for a given range we can use the function operative (SUM):

=Sum(A1:A10)