Essential Microsoft Excel Shortcuts

Essential Excel Keyboard Shortcuts You Must Know

Keyboard shortcuts can really improve your productivity for frequent users of Microsoft Excel. This article runs through some of the top  keyboard shortcuts you should know.

And to help you navigate Excel more quickly, print out our handy cheat sheet so you can have these essential shortcuts to hand.

Navigating a workbook

1. Move to the top or bottom cell of current column

Control + Down/Up Arrow (moves to the next non blank cell in column)

1. Navigate across worksheets

Control + Page Up/Page Down

1. Move to the next non blank cell in a row

Control  + Left/Right Arrow

1. Selects all cells containing data above or below the current cell

Control + Shift + Down/Up Arrow

1. Select all cells containing data to the left or right of the current cell 

Control + Shift + Left/Right Arrow

1. Select all cells in a range

Control + Shift + 8 

1. Create a new blank worksheet within workbook

Shift + F11

1. Open the cell for editing in the formula bar

F2 

1. Navigates to cell A1 (or top left of sheet if Freeze panes is on)

Control + Home

1. Navigate to the last cell which has been used

Control + End

1. Autosum the numbers above the current cell (or numbers to the left of the current cell)

Alt + =

1. Insert row or column

Control + Shift + =

1. Delete row or column

Control +  -

1. Add or remove filters

Control + Shift + L

Formatting

1. Insert the current date

Control + ;

1. Display the format cells dialog box

Control + 1

1. Apply number formatting

Control + Shift + 1

1. Apply currency formatting

Control + Shift + 4

1. Apply percentage formatting

Control + Shift + 5

Grouping worksheets

1. Make same change to multiple worksheets

Click first required sheet and then Shift + Click the last required sheet

Want to learn more about Excel? Our Introductory Excel training courses are designed for beginners who want to learn how to create, edit, format and print basic worksheets. AdvancedExcel training courses will enable you to apply advanced analysis techniques to more complex data sets such as PivotTables. 

Related blogs and videos

Video tutorials: Freeze panes, transpose and autofill in Excel

Video tutorials: VLOOKUP in Excel

Video tutorials: Creating a Pivot Table in Excel

Video tutorials: Conditional Formatting in Excel

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