Excel Keyboards Archives - Faster At Excel

Lazy Cheating Bum’s Guide To Excel Shortcuts

January 19, 2016 by terp Leave a Comment

How Can I Become A Lazy, Cheating Bum With Excel Shortcuts?

Excel shortcuts are for “lazy” people (actually, for smart and efficient people). But I’d like to take laziness to another level — and show you how to be lazy about being lazy.

Excel provides some easy ways to discover shortcuts, or remind yourself of them if you’ve forgotten. These methods work with some types of shortcuts, and only in some situations. However, they can be very useful, especially while you’re learning shortcuts. Or, if you’re too lazy to remember shortcuts, this is your easy way out.
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Excel Menu Key

November 1, 2015 by terp Leave a Comment

What is the Menu Key and why is it important in Excel?

This is a short but hopefully useful post.

Right-clicking, as you probably already know, brings up an Excel “context menu” that gives you quick access to lots of common commands. The menu differs, not surprisingly, based on the context. Hitting the Menu Key (or “Context Menu Key” or “Application Key”) brings up the identical menu. The Menu Key is typically located on the bottom right side of the keyboard, somewhere between the Alt and Ctrl keys. Below is a picture (your keyboard may be different and smaller keyboards may not even include it – but if yours doesn’t you should consider getting one that does — see my Excel Keyboard Review):

If you look at a close-up you’ll see that it resembles a mouse pointing at a drop-down menu – as if you had just right clicked.

Thus, you can use the Menu Key to do things in Excel like Paste Special, Insert, Delete, open the Format Cells dialog box and other things you might normally do with the mouse.

If your ultimate goal is to become a keyboard only user in Excel, then the Menu Key is very helpful. It can turn hybrid shortcuts (that combine the mouse and the keyboard) into plain old keyboard shortcuts. And it can provide shortcuts that are faster than Alt shortcuts or other keyboard shortcuts.

In general, I advocate using the Menu Key (vs. the mouse) when your right hand is already on (or going to) the keyboard. Otherwise, I find right clicking to be a faster way to pull up the context menu.

Excel Keyboard Review

September 15, 2015 by terp Leave a Comment

I recently got rid of my standard keyboard in favor of something that would make me faster. Research and testing consumed me for nearly a week so I figured I’d do an Excel Keyboard Review based on my findings.

When using Excel, I generally like having my right hand on the mouse, and rarely use the number pad on the right side of the keyboard. So it makes sense for me, on the right hand side of the keyboard, to do away with the number pad and lay out the remaining useful keys (the navigation cluster) more efficiently than the standard layout which has lots of extra space. This would allow me to have a smaller keyboard and position my mouse in the liberated desktop space. Doing this puts my right hand (while on the mouse) closer to the keyboard, which enables faster switching between mouse and keyboard when necessary. If you use your hands differently you may have a different perspective on the keyboards I review below.

The Excel Keyboard I Dumped

Below is the keyboard I had — the Microsoft Wireless Comfort Keyboard 5000. The curved layout and the wrist pad are ergonomic pluses, and did have the very useful Menu key which effectively allows you to right click on the mouse by typing a key (which is useful when your right hand is on the keyboard to, e.g., use the navigation keys). But the right side layout was a big negative. As noted above, I can do without the number pad. And while the navigation keys are useful, they could be arrayed more efficiently. Finally, the numerous keys on the top row were useless to me (though they didn’t create any usability issues). Basically, the keyboard felt bulky and forced me to position it semi-diagonally (rising from the left to the right) so I could make some room for my mouse. So I decided to dump it.

Micorosoft-quiet-comfort-keyboard-5000 — Microsoft Quiet Comfort Keyboard 5000 – Excel

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