Shortcut Key Tips

Why Learn Excel 2007 Keyboard Shortcuts?

There are people who believe that Microsoft Office Excel is just for balancing your personal budget or your checkbook. While it's true that you can use Excel for those tasks, there are so many other things that Excel can do! The implications for storing meaningful data in an office setting are obvious. Any time you need to create a graph of sales numbers for last quarter, Excel is the first place you turn to, right?

However if you do some searching for novel Excel uses, you will turn up some very interesting results. How about using Excel to track your new diet? Maybe Excel is what you need to help you keep up your New Year's resolution this year?

At any rate, Excel 2007 can be a great tool for getting things done and it is the most popular spreadsheet application around. If you're dealing with numbers, dates, or any large amounts of data, Excel is the place to go.

1. Use number formatting shortcuts

For circumstances when you need to format a large amount of data, Excel offers time-saving shortcuts for many common formatting functions. Experiment with these handy ones:

·         Format numbers to include two decimal places: Ctrl+Shift+1

·         Format as time: Ctrl+Shift+2

·         Format as date: Ctrl+Shift+3

·         Format as currency: Ctrl+Shift+4

·         Format as percentage: Ctrl+Shift+5

·         Format in scientific/exponential form: Ctrl+Shift+6

Other Important keys

• ALT+SHIFT+F1 - This inserts a new worksheet into the workbook.
• F6 - This switches between the worksheet, Ribbon, task pane, and Zoom controls. This is probably the most useful shortcut of all. This cool shortcut is also the most beloved to the all anti-mouse users out there.
• SHIFT+F6 - This does the reverse of the F6 shortcut.
• CTRL+F6 - This switches to the next workbook window when multiple workbook windows are open.
• CTRL+D - This uses the fill down command on the selected cells. Fill down copies the content and format of the topmost cell into the cells below.
• CTRL+R - This uses the fill right command on the selected cells. Fill right copies the content and format of the leftmost cell to the cells to the right.
•  Shift +Spacebar: This is to select current  entire row. Further hold “Shift” and press up-down arrow keys to select wanted rows continuously.
• Ctrl +Spacebar: This is to select current entire Column.  Further hold “Shift” and press Left-Right  arrow keys to select wanted Columns continuously.
• To select entire Sheet : Ctrl+ Shift+ Spacebar  / Ctrl+a to select non-empty cells

Extending Selections

To extend the selection by one cell	SHIFT+arrow key
To extend the selection to the last nonblank cell in the same column or row as the active cell	CTRL+SHIFT+arrow key
To extend the selection to the beginning of the row	SHIFT+HOME
To extend the selection to the beginning of the worksheet	CTRL+SHIFT+HOME
To extend the selection to the last used cell on the worksheet (lower-right corner)	CTRL+SHIFT+END
To extend the selection down one screen	SHIFT+PAGE DOWN
To extend the selection up one screen	SHIFT+PAGE UP