Nifty Paste Special in MS Excel

I have had situations when I was using an MS Excel spreadsheet and had a column of data and then wanted to increase the value of a range of cells by, perhaps, 10%. No doubt, you have also experienced this when using MS Excel. If so, I am sure that this meant keying in the new values, or using a hidden column and formulas, or by making all of the cells formula-based when you created the worksheet.

Well now I am going to tell you how to do it the easy way -- the way in which you save time and keystrokes! That's what I'm talking about!

Follow the steps below to learn how:

• Open your spreadsheet and find an empty cell. Key in your multiplier.  
   
• If you want to increase your values by 20%, for example, you will want to key in 1.2 -- 120%. If you want to decrease your values, it will be under 1.00.  
   
• Copy that cell.  
   
• Now highlight the entire range of cells that you want to update.  
   
• Click on Edit | Paste Special.  
   
• You will now see a dialog boxes with many choices. Under Operation, select Multiply.  
   
• Click OK.

MS Excel will apply the update and you are finished! The great thing is that you have accomplished this once onerous task very quickly and easily

If you perform this operation on a range of cells with formulas, Ms Excel will still update -- even updating the formulas to include the multiplier that you pasted in the operation!

Pretty darned nifty if you ask me!

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