Have you ever opened an Excel file and felt a pang of unease? Rows upon rows of data, cryptic formulas sprawled across cells, and a tangle of manual formatting that seems one misstep away from chaos.

Excel gurus love to tell you, "Always format your data as a table." While that's usually solid advice, it's not always the best move. In some scenarios, a simple range outperforms a table entirely.

These overlooked Excel features simplify formula editing, data analysis, web imports, and managing information across ...