Tuesday's Tip #2 - 3 Easy Excel Keyboard Shortcuts to save you TONS of time

excel Dec 17, 2019

Tuesday's Tip: 3 Easy Keyboard Shortcuts to Save Tons of Time

As a fellow Excel user AND someone who's trained hundreds of people in Excel - I can almost guarantee you don't know all these keyboard shortcuts and if you don't, you NEED to.

Shortcut 1: CTRL + [ARROW]

First let me clarify, the [arrow] can be any of the 4 arrow keys on your keyboard. Keep in mind that's a little different on everyone's keyboard. For example, my 4 arrow keys are in the lower right hand corner of my keyboard - I work on a Microsoft Surface.

So the Ctrl with the arrow key moves you in any direction to the next blank. For example, if I am in cell A1 and I have 5000 rows of data and row 5001 is blank and I use Ctrl+↓ that will bring me to cell A5001. It's SO FAST! It's such a great easy way to move around a large set of data. Most people think it moves you to the bottom of the data set - but that's only true if there's no blanks in the data.

Keep in mind, this can be done in any direction using any of the 4 directional arrows combined with the CTRL key.

Watch the video to see how fast and proficient this is.

If you want to get fancy - you can use CTRL+SHIFT+[ARROW] to select the data.

Shortcut 2: CTRL + A

I bet you didn't know this one, to be honest, I just learned how to use this in this new way not too long ago myself, and I LOVE IT!

When you have a dataset - could be a couple of rows/columns or thousands - if you have any of the cells in that dataset selected, you can use CTRL+A to quickly and easily select the entire dataset. SO. COOL!

Shortcut 3: F11

F11 is awesome it creates a chart in the press of a button. Often times it is used after CTRL+A is used to select the set of data to chart. Keep in mind, if you haven't used any of the function keys before:

There are 12 Function keys
They are usually above the number keys on your keyboard labeled F1, F2 etc.
Sometimes you have to use a FN key on your keyboard to activate your function keys

Remember, if you haven't taken me free course - 3 Excel Tips to Super Charge your Excel Skills - you can take it here.

AND, if you love these tips and tricks and can't get enough - here's a link to my course:

20 Amazing Tricks and Hacks you Need to Master Excel

Your Excel Guru