Microsoft Excel is still the most commonly used spreadsheet tool across businesses.  

For first-time users, it can be daunting - the interminable rows stretching away as far as the eye can see, the many icons crowded into the top bar, each of their meanings opaque.

But fear not, here we present all of the tips and tricks to ease your journey through the Excel wilderness - from novice users up to seasoned pros looking to add a few strings to their bows. 

1. Shortcuts

First things first, if you want to feel like an Excel pro and impress all your friends, you'll need to be armed with an arsenal of shortcuts. Nothing bar nothing is going to make you feel like more of a spreadsheet ninja.

So, here goes, in no particular order, some of the most useful shortcuts you'll need: 

Ctrl+` - Reveals all of the formulas used in each box, you can use to toggle between the results and the formula (that strange little symbol is a 'backtick', or, a 'grave accent' - which first appeared in the polytonic orthography of Ancient Greek to mark a lower pitch than the high pitch of the acute accent)

Ctrl+Shift+7 - Quickly and simply draw a border around one or more cells 

Alt+E+S+V - After copying a value, use this to paste just the value into a different cell, without carrying over the formatting or any other pesky attribute

Ctrl+Spacebar - This is a quick way to highlight all the values in a column

Shift+Spacebar - How to highlight all the values in a row 

Ctrl+Alt+V - Transpose a column into a row with this paste special - after using the normal copy command, use this shortcut in the leftmost cell of the row you would like to paste into, and then simply select the 'transpose' option and see your cells jump into a horizontal formation. 

Ctrl+T - After selecting the relevant data, turn it immediately into a table with this shortcut 

2. Import web data into your spreadsheet

For well-formatted, HTML data tables that appear on the web, you can drag this data directly into your Excel spreadsheet.

To do so, simply head to the 'Data' tab in excel, then New Query > From Other Sources > From Web. Enter the URL for the web page, then Excel will automatically pull in any HTML tables from that page. Simply select the one you want.

However, bear in mind that if the tables are messy or poorly formatted you'll have some work on your hands getting them up to scratch in your document. 

3. Add a summary row to a table

You can easily add a summary row to your table with the command 'Total row'. You can select from a variety of row functions including total sum, standard deviation, or average, for example. 

This then means that this row is 'attached' to your table (as it wouldn't be if you manually entered this row), no matter how you go on to configure the data. 

4. Filter your figures with slicers

Drop down arrows next to each column header offers an easy way to sort and filter data. However, particularly for large data sets, there is a better way - 'Slicers'. 

As the tantalising name would suggest, these can cut your data up.

As Indiana University professor and part-time advisor on basketball stats, Wayne Winston, puts it: "people love slicers".

To add a slicer to your table, simply hit the Design ribbon, select 'Insert slicer' and then choose which columns you want to filter. 

5. Use INDEX MATCH to look up data

You can use this function when looking for data that is the same, greater than, or less than another value in a different column. 

Simply use this layout: INDEX(ColumnToSearchForValue, MATCH(CellWithLookupKey, ColumnToSearchForLookupKey, 0) 

i.e. INDEX(B2:B73, MATCH(D2, A2:A73, 0)) (for example!)

In this example, the 0 means 'the same as', whereas a 1 or -1 would mean more or less respectively. 

6. Sort your data in a pivot table

A pivot table is a table that summarises data illustrated in a different table, by for example, averaging or summing the data in the first table. 

In a pivot table, sometimes it's necessary to filter data by a particular column. However, unlike normal tables, pivot tables often do not have drop down menus on each column. But you can instead select the drop down arrow on the first column, you'll have the option to sort by any column.