Excel handy keyboard shortcuts

There are hundreds of keyboard shortcuts in Excel all peforming some very specific tasks. So which ones are useful and which ones aren’t?

In this short guide we have selected some of the handiest keyboard shortcuts, which will save you loads of time and effort.

Inserting

Inserting a row

Select a cell where you want to insert a row, then press Alt & i followed by r

Inserting a column

Select a cell where you want to insert a column, then press Alt & i followed by c

Inserting a worksheet

Press Alt & i followed by w

Moving About

Go to the next worksheet

Press Ctrl & Page Down

Go to the previous worksheet

Press Ctrl & Page Up

Open a new workbook

Press Ctrl & n

Move to any cell

Press Ctrl & g and enter the cell reference you want to jump to (e.g. G20) – Handy for quickly moving around large sheets

Move to last cell in data region

Press Ctrl & End to move to the bottom right corner of your data. This finds the last columns and rows that contain data, so the cell it jumps to may be empty, however there will be no data to the right or below this point.

Move to top, left corner (A1)

Press Ctrl & Home to return to cell A1

Selecting cells and ranges

Select all the cells on the current sheet

Press Ctrl & a

Note – This works in two ways. If you select a cell in a blank area before pressing Ctrl & a it will select the whole sheet, however if you select a cell in an area with data in, it will just select the region with the data in. (Ctrl & Shift & 8 also selects a region of data in the same way)

Selecting cells in rows and columns

Ctrl & Shift & Up Arrow – Will select the current cells and all the cells above

Ctrl & Shift & Down Arrow – Will select the current cells and all the cells below

Ctrl & Shift & Right Arrow – Will select the current cells and all the cells to the right

Ctrl & Shift & Left Arrow – Will select the current cells and all the cells to the left

Ctrl & Space – Will select the whole column

Shift & Space – Well select the whole row

Formatting

Open the format cells dialog box

Select the cells you want to format followed by Ctrl & 1

Edit cell content in cell

To edit text in the cell rather than in the formula bar, select the cell and press F2

Enter line breaks in a cell

To insert a line break in your text press Alt & Enter

Odds and sods

Insert a sum formula

Press Ctrl & = to enter =Sum() automatically

Insert today’s date

Press Ctrl & ; to enter today’s data

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