Excel keyboard navigation is one of the coolest things almost Excel (yes, that means not impinging the pussyfoot!).
Using the keyboard as the primary controls module hugely change your day-to-day fecundity. It’s also one of
the principal ways to set yourself apart as an front person of Surpass. You’ll be the organism in the duty who can
use Surpass with retributive the keyboard. Your fable will be told far and opened.
If your original means for using Excel has been the pussyfoot, your earth is active to transfer. No. things primary, pick
up your steal and put it gone – down the observe, on top of your screen rise, wherever it is out of
stretch. You don’t beggary to disturb the pussyfoot in this chapter or the incoming one. This is Seemly Pussyfoot Emplacement
for Front Surpass.
If you’re on a laptop – level ameliorate! Those younger touchpads are horribly uneconomical for Surpass. You’ll spend half
your employed life scrolling around and awkwardly clicking.2 The keyboard is here to provide.
At best, ignoring the mouse will be discomfited, and it leave definitely laggard you imbibe. You gift be tempted to
use the steal “meet a emotional bit.” But swear me: formerly you captain the rightish shortcuts and key combinations,
you’ll be cruising through Surpass untold faster than before!
The Essentials: [Arrows], [CTRL], [SHIFT]
Keyboard navigation all starts with the arrow keys, combined with [CTRL] and [SHIFT]. These are the core
tools of keyboard navigation:
[Arrows] Move one cell at a time
[CTRL] + [Arrows] Move to end of contiguous range
[SHIFT] + [Arrows] Select cells while moving
[CTRL] + [SHIFT] + [Arrows] Select while moving to end of contiguous range
se the [UP], [DOWN], [LEFT], [RIGHT] keys to move around. If you’ve never used these, it’s time to take
them for a test drive. In close quarters, arrow keys are faster than picking up the mouse and clicking around.
What about navigating the entire sheet? These arrow keys (I’ll just refer to them as [Arrows] going forward)
move you one cell at a time, which is pretty slow. Things get much better when you add the [CTRL] key.
[CTRL] + [Arrows] move to the end of a contiguous cell range. Contiguous just means they are together
with no empty cells in between; so if you have a big block of cells with data in them, move to the end of them
with [CTRL] plus one of the arrows.
The [CTRL] + [Arrows] shortcut is especially useful when you have a large amount of data. Let’s say you
have a big data set with hundreds of rows, and you’re at row 1. How do you know how many rows there
are? You have a few options:
a) Start scrolling down with the mouse all the way. That is slow and doesn’t look advanced at all.
b) Use the little scroll bar at the right side of the window. Still so slow! And not advanced.
c) Press [CTRL] + [DOWN]. Immediately you’re at the bottom of the data and it’s easy to see which row
you are in. Perfect!
Use the [Arrow] keys, and mix in [CTRL] when needed, to move around your spreadsheet. This will become
natural with practice, and in most cases much faster than finding your mouse pointer and clicking where
you’re going. Faster = more productive!
[SHIFT] + [Arrows] selects cells as you move around. Hold down [SHIFT] and use the arrows to select an
area. Once you have some cells selected, you’ll be able to do cool things with them (copy, paste, insert
rows, delete, move things around, etc.) – all using the keyboard, of course.
[SHIFT] + [CTRL] + [Arrows] works as a combination of [CTRL] and [SHIFT], meaning you select cells and
move to the end of a contiguous range.
If you have a fairly large set of contiguous data, you now have a very fast way to select that entire data set
(so you can copy it, format it, reference it, or delete it). If you’re using the mouse, you would have to click the
top-left cell, hold down the mouse, scroll over to the bottom right cell, and let go. Too slow! Try this instead:
1. Start anywhere inside the data set
2. [CTRL] + [LEFT] and [CTRL] + [UP] to go to the top left cell
3. [CTRL] + [SHIFT] + [RIGHT] and [CTRL] + [SHIFT] + [DOWN] to go to the bottom right cell
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