I used to see the double dash (--) in Excel spreadsheets and wonder what it did. It's an essential shortcut to force Excel to treat TRUE and FALSE as the numbers 1 and 0, meaning you can easily sum or count the results of a logical test across a range. Now I know, and I want to share this powerful trick with you.

Excel files often contain data we never meant to share. Saving a workbook adds metadata—like who created it and when—and we can leave personal details in comments or hidden sheets. I use one tool to find and remove this information before sharing my spreadsheets.

I usually defend Excel come hell or high water. However, when it comes to regular expressions (regexes), even I admit that open-source LibreOffice Calc is superior: it treats them as native search rules, simplifying conditional tasks to a single, clean formula.

Picture this: yet another Excel report lands in my inbox, and, once again, it's a nightmare of leading spaces, inconsistent spelling, and useless rows. Previously, I would spend hours fixing it manually. Now, however, I use Power Query to profile the mess, sanitize the text, clean up the structure, and remove all the needless clutter.

Whether you're a novice or professional, there's always room to improve your Excel workflows. There may be a powerful feature you've overlooked, for example, or a useful trick that you've simply never encountered. In any case, here are some hints and tips that greatly boosted my spreadsheet expertise.

Many Excel spreadsheets use the IFERROR function to handle errors, but this masks critical structural and data issues. Although other functions like ISERROR offer more control, IFNA is the best option because it forces all serious issues to remain visible for debugging.

Data validation in Microsoft Excel is a great way to limit what can be entered into a cell. However, creating rules using a formula allows you to enforce even more precise parameters—and there are three that I use in most of my spreadsheets.

Finding and fixing problems in Microsoft Excel is essential for a fully functioning workbook, but it can take forever. So, I made a note of the keyboard shortcuts that let me trace broken logic, see the dependencies, and fix complex calculations in just a few seconds—and I haven't looked back since.

If you can navigate a nested IF function, manage thousands of rows of data, or troubleshoot the dreaded #REF! error in Microsoft Excel, congratulations—you've been programming for years without even knowing it.

I love using Excel for things outside boring accounting. Building a fully functional, reusable, and shareable Wordle clone is one of these things. What's more, it's a fun, unique way to master fundamental Excel tools.

The FORMULATEXT function is often dismissed because it merely transforms a formula into text. However, that raw text is exactly what makes it so valuable. So, stop thinking of it as a one-trick pony—it's the perfect tool for auditing, input control, and logic validation.