Keyboard Shortcuts

UseExcel - Worksheet Keyboard Shortcuts

Excel keyboard shortcuts are essential to the business analyst with a tight deadline, the touch-typist, or to the data entry person.

Workbook Navigation

New Excel workbooks usually start with three worksheets. (You can change this option under Tools, Options, General tab, Sheets in new workbook spin box.) As you develop your new workbook, you might insert more worksheets (Insert, Worksheet). To navigate from worksheet to worksheet using your keyboard, press Ctrl-Page Up to navigate to the left, and Ctrl-Page Down to navigate to the right.

Worksheet Navigation

Cell-by-cell navigation
One of the simplest ways of navigating is to use the up, down, left or right arrow keys to navigate from cell to cell. If you hold the key down you will really zip along.

A faster way to navigate than an arrow key, is the Page Up or Page Down key. Once again, if you hold it down for a short while you will travel far.

Select the entire row of the active cell:
Select any cell. Then do Shift-Space Bar.

Related to the last shortcut - Select the entire column of the active cell:
Select any cell. Then do Ctrl-Space Bar.

Select cell A1 from anywhere in the worksheet:
Ctrl-Home

Go to the last column to the right of the active cell or go to the last (right most) non-empty cell in the active row:
Select any cell. Hold down the Ctrl key and press the right arrow key. If there is a non-empty cell to the right of the active or selected cell, then the active cell will be the non-empty cell.

If there isn't a non-empty cell to the right of the active or selected cell, then active cell will be at column IV, the 256th column of the worksheet. The reverse works too. If you are at column IV for some reason and want to get back to column 1, then press Ctrl-left arrow. Related to this tip is:

Find all non-empty cells in a row:
As above, select any cell. Hold down the Ctrl key and press the right arrow key. If there is a non-empty cell to the right of the active or selected cell, then the active cell will be the non-empty cell. Hold down the Ctrl key and press the right arrow key again. The active cell will be the next non-empty cell. You can repeat this until you get to column IV. This is a good test to see if there are any empty cells in the active row. Related to this tip is:

Go to the last row below the active cell or go to the last (bottom most) non-empty cell in the active column:
Select any cell. Hold down the Ctrl key and press the down arrow key. If there is a non-empty cell below the active or selected cell, then the active cell will be the non-empty cell.


If there isn't a non-empty cell below the active or selected cell, then active cell will be at row 65,536 of the worksheet. The reverse works too. If you are at row 65,536 and want to get back to column A, then press Ctrl-left arrow. Related to this tip is: Find all non-empty cells in a column: Select any cell. Hold down the Ctrl key and press the down arrow key. If there is a non-empty cell below the current active cell then, the active cell will be the non-empty cell. Hold down the Ctrl key and press the down arrow key again. The active cell will be the next non-empty cell. You can repeat this until you get to the last row. This is a good test to see if there are any empty cells in the active column. This is a good test to see if there are any empty cells in the active row. Go To: You can do Edit, Go To with your mouse (or do Alt-E, G), but why, when you can do Ctrl-G, or better still F5 ?! Go To remembers where you were as well. To try this feature, select cell A10, press F5, enter cell address D100 in the Reference box , click OK, then press F5 again and cell address A10 should be waiting in the Reference box for you.
Find the last used cell in the worksheet: Ctrl-End will find the last used cell in the worksheet. It will persistently find the last ever used cell even if the cell's contents have been deleted. But it is a handy tip to find some non-empty cells that are not in your current window.

Range Selection Select a cell and adjacent cells (this is called a range):

Select a cell, say B2.	Hold the Shift key down. Use the Up, Down, Right, or Left keys to extend the range of selected cells. The image above shows what it should look like after using the right arrow key twice.	The image above shows what it should look like after using the down arrow key twice. When you are finished, let go of the Shift key.
Tip: If you have let go of the Shift key and want to expand or shrink your selected range, just hold the Shift key down again and resume using your arrow keys.

Expand a selected range:


Select a cell, say B2 and then drag the selection down to B4.	Hold the Shift key down. Press Right key once to extend the selected range by three more cells to the right.	Press Right key one more time to extend the selected range by three more cells to the right.

Select a range with data:

Here is a quick way to select a large range of data. In the images below, I use only a small range of data, but imagine you have thousands of rows of data. Manually selecting the range by dragging the mouse would take too long.

Select a cell, say A1.	Hold the Shift key down. Press End key once. Press the -> (Right) key once to extend the selected range to the last non-empty to the right (cell D1).	Continue to hold the Shift key down. Press End key once. Press down arrow key once to select the last non-empty row. Notice that this tip works best with ranges without any empty cells. If the range has empty cells, you may have to manually select the range.

Select a cell and nonadjacent cells:

Select cells A1:B2.
Hold the Ctrl key down and with the mouse, select a D2:D3.
Note that in the image below, cells D2 is the active cell because it is the one you last selected.
(You used the mouse to select range D2:D3. Refer to the image below.)

Navigating within a selected range:

Select a range, say A1:D4.
Holding down the Ctrl key and pressing the period key will cycle around the four corners of the selction: A1, D1, D4, A4.

This shortcut is really handy if you select an entire column. Then Ctrl-. will tell you if row 65,536 is empty with just two keystrokes.

Copying, Cutting and Pasting

There are at least four ways to copy/cut and paste in Excel.

The slowest way: Select the range to copy. Go to Edit, Copy, then select the destination cell and go to Edit, Paste.
A slightly faster way is to use the menu keyboard shortcuts. Menu keyboard shortcuts are used by pressing the Alt key with the underlined letter on the menu. So to copy and paste, you would select the range to copy, then press Alt-E, then C, select the destination cell and then do Alt-E again, then P.
An even faster way to copy and paste is to select the range to copy. Press Ctrl-C (to copy), select the destination cell, then press Ctrl-V (to paste).
The quickest way to copy and paste is to select the range to copy. Press Ctrl-C (to copy), select the destination cell, then press Enter (to paste).

Miscellaneous

A general tip is under each menu, the sub-menu items will have their keyboard shortcuts shown also. So the more often you use the Excel menus, the more you will get used to the keyboard shortcuts. For example:

Under Edit
Ctrl-z will do Edit, Undo. Ctrl-Y will do Edit, Redo. Note, a history of Undo and Redo will build up that you can see in the Standard Toolbar. Note also, this Undo and Redo history disappears each time you File, Save. (Refer to the image below.)
undo history

Spell checking
F7 will run Tools, Spelling.

Autosum formula