Below are 17 steps I take with fresh data, along with the shortcuts I use.
12 deal directly with data analysis; the other 5 are generic.
If you do a lot of Excel data analysis, these shortcuts will help you fly through your work much faster. Consider them arrows in your quiver.
If you want to enter something in cell A1, and have the same value or formula extend down to A20, how would you do it? Here are three methods that are commonly used:
Here’s a fourth one that’s simple, yet not as commonly used — and you’ll see that it’s also faster and more flexible:
4. Ctrl+Enter
So how does Ctrl+Enter work?
Simple: just select your whole range BEFORE you start typing. Then, after you’re done typing, hit Ctrl+Enter instead of Enter.
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+^) |
You probably know that Ctrl+W will close an Excel file.
But what if the file hasn’t been saved yet?
Then you get the annoying pop-up below.
Here’s a challenge for you: how do you close such an unsaved Excel file with your left hand — using only keys on the left side of the keyboard? The answer is below the graphic.
Answer:
Ctrl+W-Spacebar (Save) or Ctrl+W-Tab-Spacebar (Don’t Save), or Ctrl+W-Tab-Tab-Spacebar (Cancel).
(1) it helps confirm that you’ve selected everything you want to select (important with big selections where you’re using Ctrl+A or Ctrl+Shift+End). Zooming out will show you clearly whether you’ve omitted anything. In other words: it can save your @$$.
(2) it helps your eyes when you’re in the office until 11pm for the fourth straight night
(3) it helps you share your screen with someone standing behind you
(4) you tell me…
So here are some shortcuts so you can zoom faster in Excel.
Fastest: Ctrl+mouse-scroll — in other words, press the Ctrl key and (while it’s pressed) roll your mouse wheel forwards/backwards. This will zoom you in and out, and you can see exactly how far (what %) you are zoomed in/out by looking at the Zoom Slider at the bottom right of Excel (see picture below). It doesn’t get much easier than this. You get to keep your hand on the mouse. I call this a “hybrid shortcut” since you’re using both mouse and keyboard in one shortcut.
