We more or less expect to be bombarded with queries on how-to-do-this-in-Excel on a daily basis, but every now and then, the trickle of questions turns into a deluge. And while we really like helping out folks with questions on Excel, some of them needn't even arise in the first place.

And that's because the solution to most problems lies in the No.1 resource for Excel tips and tricks - and it also happens to be the most underutilized one. The Help section in Excel comes loaded with all kinds of information, and all of it is accesible in myriad ways. In today's tutorial, we are going to talk about five ways in which you can, literally, help yourself.

1) Press the F1 button: This might be a duh! moment for some of you, and it might be a godsend for others. Whichever camp you fall into, it helps to remind oneself that rather than firing up your search engine, or speaking to a colleague in the next cubicle, it might be worth your while to simply hit F1 and search within the archives of Excel's help section itself. They are voluminous, they are very well written, and it is only rarely that you will not be able to find an answer there. In fact, if your query is simply along the lines of finding out more about a particular function or feature, rather than an advanced question, Excel's help is simply the best resource out there. It's free, it's offline (although they have an online section as well) and it's literally a keystroke away.

2) Contextual Help: A rather less well known feature is the abillity to pull up contextual help. As we mentioned in the first tip, pressing F1 is easy enough, but if you know what you're looking for, it might make sense to use the method we're outlining now. Let's assume that you want some help on the SmartArt feature. In this case, all you need to do is click on the Insert tab, and hover your mouse over the SmartArt icon. 

When you press F1 in this case, the help section opens up with help on SmartArt. Pretty useful tip, right?

3) The Little Question Mark: Microsoft has been relatively thoughtful when it comes to giving you quick access to help, and yet another way yo pull up the help menu is by clicking on the little question mark that often accompanies pop-up boxes within Excel. It's located at the right top corner, adjacent to the cross that closes the window, and it also pulls up contextual help in a jiffy.

4) Pin the Help Window: Some of you are going to want to send in thank-you cards our way after hearing of this tip, I'm sure. The thing is, Excel opens up the help section in a new window, and that makes it a little difficult to keep switching between the help section and the file on which you need help in the first place. Sure ALT+TAB is just a couple of keystrokes away, but viewing both windows at one time would be great. In other words, it would be really cool if you could resize the help window, and keep it on top while working in the main Excel file, right? Well, .... ta-da!

I don't know if you ever noticed it before, but there's a little "pin" button on the top of the help window, that does just that... it "pins" the Help window on top. So you don't need to keep switching between windows every time you need to refer to the help section and work on your file at the same time.

5) Help on Help: This may be a little meta, but it is possible to find out more stuff about Excel by clicking on the Office button in Office 2007 (it's located at the left top corner) or on the File button in Office 2010. Once you click on the Help button, you can find out which version of Excel you happen to be running, whether the product has been activated or not, and best of all - a way yo get in touch with Microsoft. Particularly useful if you want to let them know about that dream new feature that you cannot believe hasn't been included yet.

There - those are the Top 5 ways in which you can use the Help feature on Excel to, well, help yourself. Know of any we have missed? Do let us know in the comments below!

Tips, Tricks, and Insights