Charlie Young : Smarter Ways to Use Excel for Engineering

1. Use Excel's CONVERT function to go from one system of units to another (Eg. kg to lbs)
2. I love this one - shame on me for re-learning this and failing to practise it for the last N years : Use named ranges to keep formulas meaningful. YouTube should give you something here - just go to Formulas and use the Name Manager.
3. Update charts automatically with Dynamic Titles, Axes and Labels. Thy friend here is the CONCATENATE function. 
4. Use the Goal Seek tool (one of Charlie Nuttelman's (CU Boulder) favorites) to find the input that will give the desired output. Data > Forecast > What-If Analysis > Goal Seem. Also good for transcendental equation solving.
5. Use INDEX and MATCH for table lookup - they also enable linear interpolation. 
6. Accurately fit equations to tabulated data : This is not the same as fitting a good trendline to your data in the chart (one I actually learnt from the great Eric Fesler who taught Bob Pease his stuff at National) and then using that equation. The actual equation is not very helpful because it has magic constants that depend on the data. So? Use the LINEST function - an array fn that returns the coefficients that define the best fit line through a data set. It can also do multiple linear regression. Hmm... one wonders if one should use this capability to create a clone of Tan Du's resistor-divider generator (which used to run Matlab).
7. Troubleshoot Bad Spreadsheets with Excel's Auditing tool : Formulas > Trace Precedents
8. Use Data Validation to constrain input and improve the quality of your tool.

Thank you Sir.