What additional Excel functions do you wish for?

I am of the opinion that overall the years, Excel hasn't addressed some of the key issues that make an Analyst's life harder.

For starters: 1. Trace precedents - I can't think of an excuse to not develop a function that allows you to trace multiple precedents or dependents. If you're auditing a model and you see a formula with 15 ifs, 5 chooses and 2 index matches, you'll want to kill yourself going through each reference using F5.

  1. Shortcut for align across selection - my biggest pet peeve is when I see someone use Merge and Center instead of Align Across Selection. There is not a lot of instances where you really need to merge cells. People like to use it just for the center function. So, why not make the Align Across Selection easier to use?

  2. A mode that automatically turns constant numbers blue, direct links green and external links red

  3. And how can I forget - the Eyedropper

What is your wish list?

28 Comments
 
Best Response

Hopefully this goes to the front page, then WallStreetOasis.com can do a poll and send it to Satya Nadella. Lol.

  1. Your rank is a student, so I'm going to guess you haven't used the Cap IQ or FactSet Excel plugins yet. They are great. Not perfect, but great - a prime example of this is the Pro Trace or Power Trace or whatever it's called. Ctrl Shift [ and Ctrl Shift ] open a small dialogue box through which you can trace back as far as you'd like where stuff comes from, as well as use the up and down arrows to go through terms in a formula. Unless a cell is a direct link and I'm simply using it for navigational purposes, I never use regular trace precedents/dependents anymore.
  2. Hear you there 100%.
  3. Other stuff: exporting to PPT easier, having formulas that wrap when you type them (but not the resulting value) so the result is that when you're editing a formula, stuff is indented a la coding.
Maximum effort.
 
  1. As mentioned, plug-ins solve this.

  2. Ctrl 1, bro. Then right arrow, tab, down 6, enter. Second nature to me. You can also just use it once and then paste format whenever you want something else. You can also record a macro and put it up on QAT but you can't undo a macro so it's kind of a pain.

IDK, there's not much excel can't do when you start writing macros. I've experimented with some formatting macros that I couldn't figure out how to get to work without super complicated code so maybe some sort of dumbed down VBA for those of us who don't have time/patience to learn it?

 

Not sure if your firm allows you to download addins for excel but there is one called Boost that allows you to map any ctrl + "key" command to just about any toolbar function. (I admit I have gotten quite used to Alt + commands to navigate the toolbar but Boost is really useful for those formatting shortcuts you seem to use every 20 seconds. It would be (marginally) easier to map a ctrl command to align and center than Ctrl 1 > right > tab > c > c

 

Keyboard shortcuts for choosing colors, not just bringing up the color menu. Arrowing around that shit is annoying as hell. Also putting recent colors at the top. And the ability to change standard colors (assuming this is possible somehow but I've never looked into it).

But even more important, saving defaults. This might be possible and if it is someone please let me know, but things like automatically open without gridlines so I don't have to hit Alt WVG every time I start a new sheet. And automatically set auto calc to exclude data tables. Set default font/size, etc

 

Kid at my last bank wrote a macro that cycled our primary colours, so he'd write titles in the first row, hit CTRL +x once, boom, title row is BB Blue, second row: add units, CTRL+x twice, boom, unit row is now BB second colour, etc.

Only downside is that some clients can't accept books with Macros, so you have to add removing the macros to your pre-send checks.

 

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