56 comments As an analyst (or manager), I bet a good portion of your Excel time is spent writing formulas and getting the results. So today, let us learn 5 important keyboard shortcuts that will save you a lot of time and help you write better formulas. F2: Edit a formula cell.
When you select a cell and press F2, Excel places cursor at the end and lets you edit the cell value / formula. F3: Paste names in to formula. When you have a lot of names, often remembering them can be tricky. Whenever you want to type a name, press F3 instead. Excel will show a list of all names and pick what you want.
Tab: Auto-complete functions, names, structural references. As you start typing a formula, Excel shows auto-complete suggestions. Use arrow keys to select the function, name or structural reference you want, Press Tab key to let Excel type it for you. You can save a ton of time by just arrow key + tabbing. F4: Switch reference styles – Absolute Mixed Relative Absolute. When typing formulas, often you may want to change a certain cell reference to Absolute or Mixed or Relative. You can use F4 key to do the switching.
The arrow keys on the keyboard can be used instead of the mouse pointer to select both the source and destination cells when copying and pasting data. To select multiple adjacent cells with the arrow keys, press and hold down the Shift key. 1 Reset Shortcut Keys in Microsoft Excel; 2 Cut & Paste From the Clipboard in Excel VBA; 3 'The 'Control' Key Doesn't Work with a Microsoft Keyboard & a Mac'. Values for each are blank, the.
Just place cursor inside the range / cell address and press F4 to cycle thru all available reference styles. (more: ). ALT + ESF: Paste Formulas only. If you just want to make a copy of the formulas and omit cell formatting etc., copy the cells with formulas, go elsewhere, press ALT + E and then S and F. And you get a copy of the formulas alone.
Bonus Shortcuts & Tricks: Writing and editing formulas is such an important part of Excel that there are many other useful shortcuts and tricks. Here are a few of my favorites:. F9: Evaluate selected portion of a formula. Select a portion of a formula and press F9 to evaluate it alone. See the results and debug easily. (related: ).
![Keyboard Short Cut Keys In Mac Excel For Paste Values And Past Formulae Keyboard Short Cut Keys In Mac Excel For Paste Values And Past Formulae](http://trumpexcel.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/Excel-Paste-Special-Shortcuts-Shortcuts.png)
CTRL + `: Show formulas. Very useful when explaining your worksheet to others. Press CTRL + ` (back quote, usually the key above tab on left) to on / off show formulas mode. (related: ). use to edit formula ranges: When you select a cell with formula and edit it (by pressing F2), you can see these blue, green, red rectangles around the cells to which the formula is talking. You can move these rectangles or resize them to edit the formula input ranges.
Very useful and very time saving. (more: ).
Fill down / side ways: Once you have a formula in a cell, you can drag it down or sideways (using mouse) to fill the formula down or across. What are your favorite shortcuts for writing / editing formulas? I am sure there are tons more shortcuts that I have omitted. So go ahead share your favorite ones in comments. Teach us something new. Also check out:.
There is a way to customize your keyboard in Excel: Tools Customize Keyboard. Save the desired action/keyboard combination there and you won't have to look for a shortcut again. If what you're hoping to do isn't possible in Customize Keyboard, there is still salvation. Before working in your spreadsheet, go to System Preferences Keyboard. Check 'Use all F1, F2, etc. Keys as standard function keys'.
This will take away from your Mac controls to increase brightness or sound, for example; however, it will let you use the F2 keys as indicated in Excel. When done, just go back to your System Preferences and uncheck the box to restore defaults to the Function keys. I use a similar setup but have Alt+2 as the format painter. Paste Formats is probably better because the format painter requires you to use the mouse unless you are painting an adjacent cell. For those that don't know, these are references to the Quick Access Toolbar (QAT). You can add any menu command to the QAT by right clicking it Add to Quick Access Toolbar.
Each button in the QAT is assigned a number for a keyboard shortcut. You can see the numbers by pressing the Alt key. So Alt+1 is the keyboard shortcut for the command in the furthest left position of the QAT. Hi, Actually, CTRL+; will not select all visible cells, ALT+; does that.
CTRL+; will insert current calendar date. Also, ALT+; will not actually select VISIBLE cells, it will select the ones that are not hidden by filtering, or manual hiding. 'Visible' is a relative term, because if you have a long list, Excel will not automatically zoom to (very) low procentages, in order display all visible cells. As I mentioned above, Excel will select all cells that are not hidden, no matter if you see them, or not, with your monitor limits. Cheers, Romulus.
@Grant To access the BIOS setup Press the Power Button Press and hold the Esc key until a menu pops up. You should get a menu like: (F1) System Information (F2) System Diagnostics (F7) HP SpareKey (F9) Boot Device Options (F10) BIOS Setup (F11) System Recovery for Consumer Notebooks (F11) System Recovery for Business Notebooks (F12) Network Boot It will be laid out differently to that Otherwise you can just press the appropriate Function button just after the machine is turned on instead of the Esc key. Dear Chandoo, Hui and other Chandoo.org excel PowerUsers, Could you please share with me a keyboard shortcut that allows me to trace all precedents in a cell formula that is calculated based on input cells in multiple other sheets? I am aware of 'Ctrl + ' but this shortcut directs me (only) to the first precedent in the cell formula.
To make my case clearer, please consider the following example - I have 3 worksheets with the following inputs and formula: Sheet 1: A1 = 2 Sheet 2: A1 = 3 Sheet 3: A1 = Sheet1!A1 + Sheet2!A1 While in Sheet 3 Cell A1, I would like to invoke a shortcut that will first take me to Sheet 1 Cell A1 and then (when the shortcut is invoked again) to Sheet 2 Cell A1. Hi Shikher, Here are some shortcuts for formula auditing. Alt+T+U+T - Trace Precendents (draws arrows) Alt+T+U+D - Trace Dependents (draws arrows) Alt+T+U+A - Clear Arrows Alt+T+U+F - Launch Evaluate Formula window If your precendents are on another sheet, you will see a black dashed arrow with a small spreadsheet icon at the end of it when you use the shortcuts above. If you double click on the line of the arrow, the Go To box will appear and you can view and navigate to the precendents or dependents. It is important to note that you have to double click on the black dashed line leading to the box, and not the box itself. The mouse cursor will change to a pointed arrow when you are hovering over the line, this is when you double click. These shortcuts come from Excel 2003, but they still work in 2007 and later versions.
Hope this helps, Jon. Hi, Another tip for auditing formulas (on top of F9 for evaluating part of it): 1) If formula is simple, you can hit Ctrl + to go to the cell the formula refers to (first refence is formula refers to several cells) 2) If formula is complicated, you can select a part of it (just like for F9) and hit F5 (or Ctrl+G) and just hit ENTER, this will jump to the worksheet and area where the referred cell(s) is while still being in formula editing mode.
I found the second approach very valuable for auditing workfiles. Shift + F11 opens a new tab in the current work book CTRL+N Opens a new work book Holding CTRL and then pressing the arrow keys moves the selection to the next break in the data. Hold down CTRL+SHIFT and use the arrow keys and you can very quickly highlight large areas of data for editing. Once you have selected the range: CTRL+D will 'Drop' the contents or formula from the first row of cells into all the cells below. Very handy when adding formulars to large spreadsheets.
Much quicker than dragging over 1000s of rows. CTRL+SHIFT+(number keys acros keyboard 1,2,3,4,5) Auto formats cells to Number, time, date, currency,percentage.
Hello All, I am revealing some of the MOST IGNORED shortcuts which are very powerful and useful here. In fact, Very few people use them. Shift+Enter: When you have some range of cells with gaps in the data, you cannot use the keyboard shortcut Ctrl+Shift+Down Arrow or Ctrl+Shift+Up Arrow, you cannot select them all at a go, because it will stop you before the next blank cell. If the data in question is in D2:D12000 with some gaps in between and we want to select whole range, here is the method: 1)Keep the cursor at D2, 2) Go to the Namebox, type D12000 (you should know about the data range prior), press Shift+Enter. That's it, it goes down as an express elevator with out even stopping at any blank cells.
It's already selected. And now you can do whatever you want with it i.e. Building formula or applying some formats or colors etc. Ctrl+.: When you deal with large range of cells, may be thousands of rows deep down, especially when you build formulas, you want to check whether you are building the formula in the right column after selecting thousands of rows down, because you cannot see the column header. Then the only option is to disturb the entire selection and going to the top cell of that column to see the column header to make sure where to build the formula. Then again you have to select the whole range. To avoid this confusion, you can use ' Ctrl+.
Just select a whole range of cells and press this shortcut to see what happens. It will change the Active cell of the selection. This indirectly lets you know the column headers as well. In some formulas giving the correct cell reference of the Active cell is very important.
Then this shortcut is very useful. These two are my favorite shortcuts which very few people know about and use them.
Right click the QAT and select Customize QAT In the resulting dialog at top select Commands Not On Ribbon Scroll down to Paste Value (or one of Paste Value with Number Format, Paste Value with Source Format); click the Add button and then OK Now you have a Paste Value on the QAT (and so do I now thanks to you asking how to do it!) best wishes PS: Very interesting; I did this in XL2013 but now both XL2013 and XL2010 on my computer have the command on the QAT - that great. A Guide to MS Excel 2013 for Scientists and Engineers.