Faster At Excel

Excel Chart Shortcuts: Hybrid Mutants

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Hybrid Excel Chart Shortcuts: How To Format, Select Data and Modify Fonts

When you right click on a Chart (or in any other context), you typically get a “context menu” that looks something like the ones further down the screen.  Context menus give you a sort of hidden shortcut option I call “hybrid” shortcuts.  They work by simply typing the underlined hot key for a menu option — rather than clicking on it.

I call these shortcuts “hybrid” shortcuts because they’re part keyboard shortcut, part mouse shortcut.  If they were animals, they might be half-man, half-beast.  Kind of like the mutants below.

excel-hybrid-pivot-shortcut-images

My favorite hybrid shortcuts involve virtually no extra motion from my hands.  My left hand stays on the left side of the keyboard and my right hand stays on the mouse.  Call me lazy.

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Basic Excel Shortcuts — FREE 1-Hour Course

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Want Basic Excel Shortcuts For Everyday Productivity?

Here’s my FREE one-hour course: Basic Excel Shortcuts For 11 Everyday Tasks: Get 65% Faster

I’ll teach you 16 basic Excel shortcuts to get 65% faster at 11 everyday tasks: Save, Copy, Paste, Cut, Undo, Redo, Bold, Italics, Underline, Find and Replace.

I’ll also show you how to memorize shortcuts — plus some neat tricks to make Excel remind you what the shortcuts are.

excel-shortcuts-smiley-face-excel-logo2

If you’re slow at Excel and want to become more productive, this course is custom made for you!  It’s easy to follow, and you only need to be a beginner in Excel.

The course has 9 lectures.

Get 65% faster at basic Excel tasks — in less than an hour!

Sign up now — before it’s no longer free!

Number Formatting Shortcuts For Excel

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Excel Number Formatting Shortcuts

If you don’t mind having both hands on the keyboard, here are some handy number formatting shortcuts — all using Ctrl+Shift.

The Currency, Percent and Exponential formats are probably easiest to remember since the shortcuts incorporate the format symbol itself.

Format

Example

Shortcut
General 12345 Ctrl+Shift+` (accent grave)
Comma (with 2 decimals) 12,345.00 Ctrl+Shift+1
Time 12:00 AM Ctrl+Shift+2
Date 18-Oct-33 Ctrl+Shift+3
Currency $12,345.00 Ctrl+Shift+4 (or Ctrl+$)
Percent 1234500% Ctrl+Shift+5 (or Ctrl+%)
Exponential 1.23E+04 Ctrl+Shift+6 (or Ctrl+^)

Excel Alt Shortcuts

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What are Excel Alt shortcuts?

If you’ve ever seen someone use both hands all day long on the keyboard in Excel, chances are they were using Alt shortcuts or “keyboard accelerators.”  So what are they and how do they work?

If you hit the Alt key you’ll see the Ribbon and the QAT (Quick Access Toolbar – just below the Ribbon) light up with letters or numbers.  See below.

excel-alt-shortcuts-ribbon

These letters and numbers guide you through keystroke sequences that allow you do do virtually anything with your keyboard — instead of clicking with your mouse — as I’ll explain below. [Read more…]

Learn Excel Shortcuts — For Beginners

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Do you feel slow in Excel?  Do you want to learn Excel shortcuts but don’t know where to start?  Let’s go through some easy and useful keyboard shortcuts, plus some simple ways to commit them to memory.

If you’re a beginner in Excel, you probably use the Ribbon a lot, which is the area below.

Excel-Ribbon

While this gets the job done, there are faster ways.  But where should you start?

I will briefly walk through three Excel actions that (a) you probably perform regularly, and (b) have easy shortcuts.  These actions are: saving, cutting/copying/pasting and formatting fonts.

You can also take my free one-hour online video course.  It covers even more: Save, Copy, Paste, Cut, Undo, Redo, Bold, Italics, Underline, Find and Replace. [Read more…]