Tips for Excel, Word, PowerPoint and Other Applications
Keyboard Shortcuts in Excel
Why It Matters To You
Increased familiarity with keyboard shortcuts reduces your reliance on the mouse, resulting in more efficient work and generally, a more comfortable experience. Often times, a lot of repetitive motion stress is caused by the constant reaching for the mouse, often for trivial actions. If you learn to keep your hands off the mouse, you can reduce the amount of stress on your arms and wrist.
As a general rule, the ALT key activates menu items in every Microsoft application as well as many other popular programs. Take a look at the Main Menu in Excel. You should see an underlined letter for each menu item. For example, in the Edit menu, the "E" is underline. Hold down ALT and the underlined letter to activate that menu item. Keep holding ALT and hit the underlined letter for any of the items under Edit and you'll activate the sub menu item ... and so forth.
Selected Key Stroke Shortcuts in Excel
| Key Strokes | Result | Key Strokes | Result |
|---|---|---|---|
| Alt E, S, V | Paste only values | Ctrl + B | Inserts or deletes bold formatting |
| Alt E, S, T | Paste only formats | Ctrl + D | AutoFill down - copies topmost cells down in highlighted range |
| Alt E, M, C | Make copy of entire worksheet | Ctrl + ] | Select only cells with formulas that refer directly to the active cell |
| Alt + Arrow | Active menus from keyboard | Ctrl + R | AutoFill right - copies left most cells to the right in highlighted range |
| Alt + Enter | Insert a hard break in the same cell | Crtl + Y | Repeat the last action |
| Shift + Arrow | Highlights range using arrow keys instead of mouse | Ctrl + Z | Undo the last action |
| Shift + Tab | Move from right to left within the selection | Ctrl + Arrow | Moves to the next break in the line |
| Shift + Spacebar | Select the entire row | Crtl + Home | Moves to the beginning of the worksheet |
| Shift + End, Arrow | Highlights all cells to the last empty/used cell in the direction of the arrow | Crtl + End | Moves to the end of the worksheet |
| Shift + Ctrl + 8 | Highlights a contiguous data range | Ctrl + Page Down | Move to the next sheet in the workbook |
| Shift + Ctrl + Arrow | Selects a contiguous row or column of data | Ctrl + Page Up | Move to the previous sheet in the workbook |
| End, Arrow | Activates last empty/used cell in the direction of the arrow | Ctrl + Hyphen | Delete cell |
| Esc | Deactivate menus from keyboard | Right Click Mouse | ctivates selected features without use of the menus |
| Windows+D | Show Desktop | Windows, D | View last 18 documents accessed |
| Ctrl + 1 | Brings up the Format Cells wizard | Windows, P | Accesses your list of Programs |
Clearly there are more shortcuts available than the 20 or so I listed above, those are just some of the ones I use most often. Force yourself to use shortcuts and you'll quickly remember where they are.
Notes
| Last updated | 9/2/07 |
| Application Version | Excel 2003 |
| Author | Michael Kan |
| Pre-requisites | None |
| Related Tips | None |