Here’s a quick look at three sets of Excel shortcuts for (1) opening, (2) closing and (3) saving workbooks.
Excel Shortcuts For Opening Workbooks
Open Workbook (keyboard): Ctrl+O (this requires the right hand but I’m unaware of any left-hand only shortcut)
Ctrl+O works fine, but there’s a faster way if you’re opening a file that you recently had open (which, for me, is 95% of the time). Using this method, you can avoid wading through directories, thus saving some time. What is this method? Simple: go to the list of Recent Workbooks on the File tab, as shown below:
Luckily, the shortcut to get there is a quick left-hander (after you type it in, you can either just click on the file name as it appears in the list, or type in the keyboard accelerator — e.g., “Y1” or “Y2”):
Open Recent Files (keyboard): Alt-F-R
Learn more about pervasive Alt shortcuts like the one above (you can do pretty much anything with them).
If you’re an Excel beginner, check out my free one-hour online video course with shortcuts for Save, Copy, Paste, Cut, Undo, Redo, Bold, Italics, Underline, Find and Replace.
Excel Shortcuts For Saving Workbooks
For saving files, let’s review five shortcuts — two for “regular” Save, two for Save As and one for Save And Send (for emailing attachments):
Save (keyboard #1): Ctrl+S (very fast, easy to memorize and hard to beat)
For those who like to be different, here’s a slower one that uses an Alt sequence:
Save (keyboard #): Alt-F-S
Here are the two Save As shortcuts — the first is left-hand only (but three keys), while the second is right-handed (but only one key), so you can take your pick (I prefer the first one):
Save As (keyboard #1): Alt-F-A
Save As (keyboard #2): F12
Finally, here’s a nifty shortcut for “Save and Send” — when you want to send a file by email:
Save And Send (keyboard): Alt-F-D-A
Excel Shortcuts For Closing A Workbook
To wrap up this post, here are two keyboard shortcuts for closing a workbook — they’re both left-hand-only, and I prefer the first one since it’s one fewer keystroke:
Close Workbook (keyboard #1): Ctrl+W
Close Workbook (keyboard #2): Alt-F-C
Did I miss any of your favorites?
P.S. Learn how to discover thousands of Alt shortcuts like the ones above.
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