Ever felt tangled by a web made up of UK postcode list excel? It’s not just you. Managing these alphabetic puzzles can seem like solving a Rubik’s Cube while blindfolded. But do not worry. Excel is here to help!

Imagine the following: you’ve a list that is longer than your forearm, and it needs to be sorted by postcode. This task looks as fun as watching paint drying. Excel is like having a Swiss Army knives for data management.

First, let’s discuss how to import your postcode list in Excel. Simple as pie! Excel is easy to use. Just click ‘File > Open’ and choose the file. Voila! It’s done!

Sorting these postcodes could seem like climbing Everest sans oxygen. It’s much easier than it seems. You can sort your data by clicking on the “Data” tab and selecting “Sort A-Z”. Boom! It’s done!

And there’s much more! What happens if you only want to see certain areas? Maybe you’re interested only in London postcodes which begin with the letter “E”. Easy as lemon squeezy. Click the filter icon to the right of your postcode column, and then type “E*”. Presto! Only London East appears as a postcode.

Let’s make it more interesting with some conditional styling. Imagine you would like to highlight Manchester postcodes which begin with “M”. Choose the postcode columns, go to the Conditional formatting’ section under Home’ tab and choose New Rule>, then â€Use an formulaâ€. Type =LEFT()(A1,1)=”M”, (assuming A1 represents your first postal code). You can now see all Manchester codes lit up in the color of your choice.

Got duplicates? No problemo! Select your column again. Then, click on Data Tools under the Data’ tab. Click on the ‘Remove’ button. Then, confirm which columns to include (in this instance only the postcode) and click OK.

For those that love pivots tables (and really, who doesn’t?) The pivot table is a great way to quickly summarize large datasets. Insert one with ‘Insert>PivotTable. Drag your field of postcodes into the Values and rows boxes for a quick number of codes.

VLOOKUP can be a very useful tool. It’s almost criminal that you don’t use it. Use VLOOKUP to insert the information in your main spreadsheet. You may have another sheet which lists all regions according to postcode prefixes. Use VLOOKUP like so: =VLOOKUP(LEFT(A2,2),Sheet2!A:B,2,FALSE). This formula takes the first 2 characters of every postcode from Sheet1 starting at cell A2, checks them against Sheet2’s A:B range, and returns the matching region name from column B.

Finally, you can use Excel’s 3D Maps to map the postcodes. Visualize geographical data in a beautiful way without having to break a sweat.

Excel is your friend when it comes to using Excel to manage UK postcodes. It is possible to map out areas visually, sort the data or filter it.