Ireland’s Diarmuid Early wins world Microsoft Excel title

My best Excel trick, which reveals how little I know, and yet Early [0] doesn't use it (or maybe doesn't need it, but that's hard to believe):

1. You can drag down the bottom of the formula bar/field and make it multi-line

2. You can insert arbitrary[*] newlines in an Excel formula

Combining those, you can turn the absurd default format of single-line-of-code functions into something readable and manageable. Here's a simple one from a spreadsheet I have open:

  =INDEX(
  $C$17:$S$24,
  MATCH(A6,$A$17:$A$24,0),
  MATCH(C6,$C$15:$S$15,0)
  )

And just think of highly nested functions. Once you know it, writing single-line functions of any complexity is absurd, as absurd as writing 'real' code that way.

[0] Early shows how it was done: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46340638

[*] I think you can do it anywhere but I haven't tested anything crazy; mostly I just use them between expressions.

> You can drag down the bottom of the formula bar/field and make it multi-line

For folks on LibreOffice (currently v24.2):

* There's an downward-pointing "expand" triangle to the far-right of the formula input line.

* That button toggles the formula input area between 1-line vs 6-lines with scrolling.

* Newlines can inserted by shift-enter.

* If there are additional formula lines lines outside the viewable line(s), then a dashed line on the relevant border will be shown. (Plus the regular scrollbar, in expanded mode.)

Terr_'s comment reminds me and I'm too late to edit the parent: In Excel's formula bar/field, insert newlines by pressing Alt+Enter.

It could be that in a competitive context fussing with formatting would cost precious seconds. Great general tip for us mortals though.

No need to drag the bottom of the cell to expand function down. Just double click the bottom of the function cell, it’ll expand down automatically.

They’re referring to the formula bar at the top of the screen (under the ribbon), not the cell itself (which are located within the grid).

Imagine a coding competition: Would you forgo newlines and write everything on one long line? Would that save time?

Perfect style guide format does consume time, but pressing Alt+Enter a few times would seem to reduce errors at essentially no cost.