Monday, December 13, 2010

Shorcut for divid'g/multipl'g/add'g/subtract'g with a factor

There is a simple shorcut for dividing/multipling/adding/subtracting any cell value with a factor. Lets me illustrate. We have following data.





All the above data is in thousands ('000). 
You copied data from another workbook/worsheet. But figures are not comparable.



In this case, you need to adjust to the copied data. You have to decided to divide each cell by 1000 manually. But this task is so boring and tedious.
Excel is suppose to make life easier? What if there were 3000 data rows. Now what shall I do?




Don't worry there is very simple way to do it.
1. Type factor (in this case 1000) in any empty cell. (I have typed in cell E1.)
2. Copy [Ctrl+C] that cell (E1 in my case).
3. Select range of cells that you want to divide. (my range is from F3 to F8)
4. Goto Edit -> Paste Special and then click Divide. Or use keyboard shortcut [Alt+E+S+I].


5. Click Ok.


Note: Cells with formula or "=" signs will retain its formula and show divide by 1000 seperately.
But cell with hard-coded numbers will be replaced by resulting value.
In this example you can see that F3 lost its original value from 2,10,000 to 210 (as noticed in formula bar).






But cells with formula like F4 (which had formula [11 x 22000]) is intact (see in formula bar).


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