11 keyboard shortcuts to use Excel at the speed of light
If you are an Office Manager or Executive Assistant, it’s plausible that you use Excel on a daily basis. Accounting, reporting, pivot tables, you name it…in several cases, the Excel software seems to be essential. But it’s not always easy to control the beast and using it can at times turn into a huge waste of time and even a nightmare. A simple article won’t be enough to learn on controlling it a 100%, but there are several tricks which will help you gain a huge amount of time. A few seconds here, a few seconds there…if one spreads it throughout the year, it makes you save a lot of time. Do you know all of them ?
Navigating from one end to the other of a table, without scrolling for 400 years
For this, there is nothing simpler, click on CTRL + any arrow to go from one end to the other of your table. Useful, so that you don’t wear out your mouse’s scroll wheel, before its time.
Repeat the last action
You’ve finished your table, it’s pretty and all and then you realize that 15 lines are missing right in the middle of it. So, you right click and insert a line, and then you get ready to repeat the operation 15 times, for 15 lines. But did you know that a keyboard shortcut allows to repeat this action? To do so, press CTRL + Y
Select the entire column
Need to select an entire column, but your table has 10000 lines on top? You may lose 15 seconds with the scroll. A faster option exists: CTRL + space. And to do the same thing with a line, SHIFT + space.
Enter the same value in several cells
You want to enter the same value in several cells. One of the ways to do this, is to enter it in one cell, then copy-paste in other cells. A huge waste of time. To go about this more quickly, select all the cells in which you wish to enter the value, type your value, then CTRL + enter. Bob’s your uncle.
Insert the day’s date in a table
You don’t know what day we are; however, you need to enter the information in your table. You can ask you colleague Gina, but you can see that she is as lost as you, perhaps even more. The solution is to press CTRL + semi-colon. And as for the time, if you’ve lost your watch, it’s CTRL + :
Copy the upper cell value
If you wish to copy the upper cell value but you’re lazy to press CTRL + C before, simply press CTRL + D in the lower cell. And to the do the same thing for the cell on the left, it’s CTRL + R.
Filter in less than a tenth of a second
Do you filter your table values often? You need to learn this shortcut to filter more quickly than lightening. CTRL + SHIFT + L and your filters appear through magic.
Add a link in a cell
The marketing director wants you to add a link towards a company website in all the tables, which may circulate around, as the latter would say “there is always some traffic, so why not make a go for it?”. If this argument seems completely phony, the fact still remains that you need to add links in a cell, at times. Why right click the hyperlink when you can simply press CTRL + K?
Put one or several cells or the percentage format
You wanted percentages, but here you are stuck with digital values. This isn’t what you want. To remedy the situation, select the concerned cell(s) and press CTRL + %. Quite logical this one, the teams who develop Excel aren’t that silly, after all.
Look for a value as efficiently as the FBI
Your table has 2000 columns per 14567 lines, and you’re looking for a value which ONLY APPEARS ONCE. You spend hours looking for this value, even if it destroys your retina. But you can save some expense at the eye doctors’ by simply pressing CTRL + F and then type in the value you’re looking for. Excel will do the rest of the work for you.
Put one or several cells in bold, italics or underline
Alright, it’s quite easy in each of these cases but you should know that there are keyboard shortcuts for these, to make this easier. To put one or several cells in bold, select these and then press CTRL + G. For italics, press CTRL + I and for underlining, press CTRL + U.
