Microsoft Excel spreadsheet is one of the skills that will come in handy on almost any kind of job or profession. Be it accounting or engineering, and we will use a spreadsheet for at least one task. Excel is a Microsoft product offering spreadsheet management. And by knowing the best Microsoft Excel Shortcuts, you can be more productive and work smartly.
Surely excel is a magnificent piece of tool for managing data and numbers. But people waste most of their time doing it slow when it can be done fast with the help of many Microsoft Excel shortcuts available. They surely accelerate your work when doing repetitive tasks.
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Learn the Best Microsoft excel shortcuts
If you heavily use Microsoft Excel for your personal accounting or for office work, these shortcuts will come handy to you. We have categorized these Excel shortcuts based on usability and functionality.
Worksheet Navigation
Ctrl+Page Up or Page down
If you’ve to deal with multiple worksheets, this shortcut is definitely going to help you. Press Ctrl and Page up to move to the next sheet in the order or press Ctrl and Page Down to go back to the previous sheet.
Ctrl+Arrow Keys
So ever wanted to move to the end of the list quickly? Well, with this Excel shortcut combo, you can move to the last data in all four directions. Press Ctrl and the preferred Arrow key, and you’ll move to the last data within the data set. You can combine this shortcut with shift for selecting ranges, refer next topic i.e, Range Selection for that.
Ctrl+Home or Ctrl+End
Press Ctrl and Home, and it’ll take to the start of the cells that is to the Range A1. But pressing Ctrl and End will take you to the last data on the spreadsheet. This will help you to get back to the top or end quickly.
Range Selection
Ctrl+Space or Shift+Space
If you want to select an entire column, simply press Ctrl and Spacebar. And again, for selecting the entire row, you can use Shift and Spacebar.
Ctrl+Shift+Space
If you don’t want to select an entire row or column but instead the complete dataset, then you can simply highlight any cell within the data range and press Ctrl, Shift and Spacebar at the same time. This will highlight the entire data range, but it requires the data to be in good shape without any empty cells, rows, or columns in between.
Shift+Arrow Keys or F8
Selecting data might be harder when using a mouse or trackpad. But When you press Shift and the desired Arrow key, you can select data in the direction. This selection mode can also be toggled by pressing F8 for once and pressing the required arrow keys to select the range.
Ctrl+Shift+Arrow Keys
As mentioned above in navigation, you can select up to the last range in a data set using the Ctrl+Shift+Arrow keys. For example, highlight the first cell in the data range and press Ctrl+Shift+Right arrow to select up to the last data to the right side of the table or data range.
Data Entry and manipulation
F2
Pressing F2 after highlighting the cell will allow you to Edit cell content without deleting existing content. This will come to handy when editing formulas. Keep in mind when in editing mode, you cannot use arrow keys to highlight ranges for your formulas. Press F2 again to use arrow keys to select ranges while entering formulas.
Alt+Enter
When you’re typing heading and text, you might have wanted to have a new line. But when you press enter, it would go to the next cell. Instead, press Alt and Enter this will add a new line to the text within the cell.
Ctrl+R
When your performing data entry, this Microsoft Excel shortcut will simply speed up the process in many cases. Highlight a cell and select the adjacent cells to the right of the cell you wish to fill the same data and press Ctrl and R. This will fill the same data to the right of the cell. This works more like the fill handle, and hence it can fill out formulas also.
Ctrl+D
This is also a similar shortcut as above. But this targets at filling downwards instead of filling up the right side of the cell. Just make sure the cell on which the data is present should be top of the current selection.
Ctrl+K
This shortcut simply adds hyperlinks to the selected cell that helps to direct the reader or user to an external location or range.
Ctrl+T
Select a specific range within the spreadsheet and press Ctrl and T to quickly convert it into a dynamic excel table. I use this function a lot.
The Alt key and Right-Click (Option) button:
Apart from these Microsoft Excel keyboard-shortcuts, the alt key and then right-click(option) key will help you to do some stuff really quickly. This is not a combo shortcut. Instead, you have to press each key individually in the exact order to achieve this. This may seem to be hard. But actually, it’s pretty easy because it will be right on your screen.
- First Press Alt key on your keyboard, now under each option in the ribbon, you’ll find a letter. For instance, F under the Files tab and H under Home Tab.
- For this example, lets press H to access items within the Home tab. Now items within the Home tab, we will have keys under them.
- And again, for our case, let’s say we want to merge the selected cells. So we have to price M that will highlight the merge option. But Merge itself has three options, so now we have to press C for Merge and center operation.
- So to sum up, Press Alt, H, M, C to merge and center the selected cells.
You can similarly manipulate this trick to run almost anything in the ribbon. For example, pressing Alt H B A will put all borders for your selected range. Similarly, press the right-click button and press the underlined text to carry out that task.
For example, right-click on a cell and press D to delete the cell. The same could be used by selecting an entire row or column and pressing the appropriate key.
Conclusion
So to conclude my point, these were the most used shortcuts in Microsoft Excel. Most of them will work with other spreadsheet programs, but it’s not guaranteed. Anyways you can use these shortcuts and tricks to accelerate your spreadsheet work, finish the job quickly, and be very productive and relaxed.