Page 93 - Excel Timesaving Techniques for Dummies

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15 All Aboard the
Numerical Entry

Technique Express!

umbers, numbers, numbers. Spreadsheets are full of them, and
Save Time By because they don’t get there by magic, it behooves you to know all
Nthe tricks of the trade for entering them as efficiently as possible.
Using the numerical
keypad The first trick is the most obvious — use your computer’s 10-key pad (or
the equivalent thereof) to make all your numerical entries. The second
Fixing your decimal trick is to let Excel set the decimal places in your numerical entries that
places all use a set number of places (that way, you can concentrate on just
Restricting data entry to entering the correct digits). The third trick is not to allow any errant text
numbers only entries into a cell range that should only contain numbers.

Taking Advantage of the Numeric Keypad

Seeing that pressing the Enter key automatically advances the cell
pointer to a new cell in the next row down — conveniently getting you in
place for your next entry — I don’t see that you have any excuse for not
entering ranges of numerical entries from your keyboard’s numeric key-
pad. (After all, your keypad does have an Enter key nearby even if it’s
embedded in the standard keyboard, as is the case on almost all lap-
tops.) When it comes to entering spreadsheet numbers with any speed,
using the number keys along the top row of the standard QWERTY key-
board just doesn’t cut it.
Unfortunately, the numeric keypad on your computer is not really the
equivalent of the old adding machine’s 10-key number pad. On the com-
puter keyboard, the keypad mostly does double-duty with other keys
(cursor keys when the pad stands apart from the standard keyboard, and
other letter and punctuation keys when it’s embedded within the key-
board itself).
As a result of this double functioning, you have to engage the numeric
keypad in Excel by pressing the Num Lock key before you can use the
pad to enter your spreadsheet numbers. This locks in the number func-
tion and simultaneously locks out the secondary cursor or letter-key
function. (Excel lets you know when the number function is engaged by
displaying the NUM indicator on the status bar.)