Kenji Explains' 10 Favorite Excel Hacks [+40 More]

When you’re reviewing reports or budgets with your team, there’s often a moment when you want to flag a number without changing the formatting or creating a new column. 

That’s where Shift + F2 comes in. It lets you insert a comment directly into a cell, so anyone opening the spreadsheet knows what to double-check or update next time.

The EDATE formula is a small but powerful trick that saves hours when working with time-based data. It’s perfect for tracking monthly invoices, forecasting budgets, or building financial models that roll forward automatically.

Here’s how it works: If your start date is in one cell, EDATE can automatically generate the next month, quarter, or even year — no manual edits required. Change your start date once, and the rest of the timeline updates instantly.

For example, if you’re building a 12-month revenue projection, you can use EDATE to create each month’s date header. That way, if your reporting period shifts, your entire model adjusts in seconds instead of you having to redo every column.

Here’s the formula I used in this example: =EDATE(C3,1)

If you’ve ever built a financial model or KPI tracker, you’ve probably seen the dreaded #DIV/0! error show up when a formula breaks. It’s distracting, and when you’re sharing your sheet with other people, it can look like something’s wrong even when it’s not.

That’s where IFERROR comes in. You can wrap your existing formula inside it so that, whenever there’s an error, Excel simply leaves the cell blank or fills it with a cleaner message like “N/A.” You can customize this with anything you want to place inside the quotation marks. 

For example, if you’re calculating profit margins and some months have missing revenue data, IFERROR will prevent your entire table from filling up with errors. It keeps your reports readable and your dashboards looking professional, especially when they’re shared with stakeholders or clients.

Here’s the formula I used in this example: =IFERROR(C13/C7,””)

The ampersand (&) is an underrated tool that can make your spreadsheets much more dynamic. Instead of manually typing labels or headers, you can merge text and cell values automatically.

For example, let’s say you’re building a sales report and want your title to update based on the client name in another cell. You can type something like ="Sales Report for " & A1, and Excel will generate “Sales Report for Acme Corp” if the client’s name is in cell A1. Change that name to a new client, and the title updates automatically.

It’s also handy for combining first and last names, product codes, or any text-based data that needs to stay consistent across multiple sheets. It saves time and helps keep your reports clean, especially when you’re presenting data to a team or client.

Here’s the formula I used in this example: =C2&C3

Copy and paste might be second nature in Excel, but there’s a faster way to duplicate data or formulas — and it’s surprisingly simple. CTRL + D copies the cell above down, and CTRL + R copies the cell to the left across.

If you’re working on a financial forecast or marketing tracker with repeating formulas, this trick saves time and reduces errors. Instead of selecting and pasting each time, you can use one shortcut to extend your logic instantly.

For instance, if you’ve built a formula for Q1 and want to apply it to the rest of the year, highlight the row and hit CTRL + R. The same formula carries through each quarter, without needing you to drag the info down or retype anything.

When you’re working with large datasets, there’s always a chance that one broken formula or missing value will throw off your calculations. That’s where AGGREGATE becomes useful. It’s a more flexible version of common formulas like AVERAGE or SUM, but with the ability to ignore errors automatically.

Say you’re building a performance dashboard and one column occasionally produces divide-by-zero errors. A regular AVERAGE formula would break, but with AGGREGATE, you can tell Excel to skip over any cells with errors and still return an accurate result.

It’s particularly useful for financial models, analytics reports, or any dataset that pulls from multiple sources because you don’t have to stop and fix every little error before moving forward.

Here’s the formula I used in this example: =AGGREGATE(1,6,C3:C11)

If you’ve ever spent too long dragging your cursor to fill in numbered rows, SEQUENCE is about to save you time. This formula automatically generates consecutive numbers across rows or columns, making it ideal for organizing data or building templates.

Let’s say you’re creating a content calendar and need to number posts from 1 to 50. Instead of typing or dragging, you can enter =SEQUENCE(50) and Excel fills the column instantly. You can even customize it to start from zero or skip by twos.

It’s a small upgrade, but for anyone managing projects, budgets, or datasets, it keeps things neat and consistent without the manual work.

Here’s the formula I used in this example: =SEQUENCE(100) and =SEQUENCE(100,,0)

If you work with customer data, contact lists, or imported CSV files, you’ve probably run into messy text fields. The TEXTJOIN and TEXTSPLIT formulas help you clean those up in seconds.

TEXTJOIN combines text from multiple cells into one, letting you choose a separator like a comma or space. For example, if you have a first name in one cell and a last name in another, TEXTJOIN can turn them into a single full name. You can even skip empty cells automatically to keep everything tidy.

TEXTSPLIT does the reverse. If you import a dataset where names or values are crammed into one column — say, “Bill, Spain” — TEXTSPLIT can separate those into multiple columns based on a comma or space. It’s a quick way to make raw data readable and usable for analysis.

Here’s the formula I used in this example: =TEXTJOIN(“,”,TRUE,B3:D3) and =TEXTSPLIT(B3,”, ”)

If you ever find yourself copying data from multiple sheets into one master file, these two formulas are your new best friends. VSTACK combines tables vertically, while HSTACK places them side by side. Both adjust automatically as your source data changes.

For example, if your sales team tracks results by region, you can use VSTACK to merge North, South, and West region reports into a single consolidated view. Update any of the source sheets, and your master table updates instantly.

HSTACK works the same way but is perfect for cases like joining two datasets — say, campaign performance and spend — where you want to see them next to each other. No more copy-pasting every week; just set up the stack once and let Excel do the rest.

Here’s the formula I used in this example: =VSTACK(F3:H10, J3:L11) and =HSTACK(F3:H10, J3:L11)

One of the newest and most impressive features in Excel is Copilot, which uses AI to interpret and categorize data automatically. It’s like having an assistant inside your spreadsheet.

For example, imagine you’re managing a company expense tracker. You have hundreds of transactions, but they aren’t categorized. With Copilot, you can prompt Excel to label each entry — classifying Uber rides as transport, Starbucks as food, and so on. It takes seconds instead of hours.

[alt] kenji excel hack; using Copilot to automatically categorize data

Copilot can also summarize trends, generate insights, and clean data using natural language commands. It’s still early days for AI in Excel, but features like this show how much smarter spreadsheets are becoming, helping you focus more on strategy and less on manual cleanup.

Here’s the formula I used in this example: =COPILOT(“use these transitions”,D3:D11, “categorize them cased on this list”,B3:B6)