Yesterday we covered the first part of doing special pastes rather than copying the entire cell or range. From the paste special dialog box, you can also do some fast manipulations of numbers.
Suppose your boss or client makes a last minute change and says to increase budgeted expenses 5% in your spreadsheet. You could set up formulas to do that and complicate the spreadsheet more. Here is another way:
Find a blank cell on the worksheet
Type in 1.05
Copy the cell where you input 1.05
Select the range of expenses that you want to increase
Right click or from the Edit menu, select Paste Special
You now have the dialog box up
In the Paste part, select Values
In the Operation part, select Multiply
Click OK
Go back and erase the cell with the 1.05
You now have done a fast increase to the budgeted expenses, without complicating your worksheet.
Now suppose you boss, changes again and says cut them by 2%. You say now, no problem. You could type in 1.02 and follow the same steps, only finish by doing Divide for the operation.
Still more changes. Add $3,000 to salaries. (Makes all those budget changes worth it!). You can do this quick with the Add operation.
Use the Operation feature of Paste Special and blow through those changes quickly.