We all have our good days and bad days with Excel. But with these 40 keyboard shortcuts, you can be assured that your session with Excel will all mean business.

Here are 40 of the most awesome Excel keyboard shortcuts to enable you to sail through all your regular and reptetive tasks like an Excel Spreadhseet Ninja.

For your convenience, I have divided them into 5 broad sections viz. – Selection, Switching, Creation, Formatting and Formula.

So here it is: 40 Excel Keyboard Shortcuts

Selection

1. Ctrl+* – Select current region.
2. Ctrl+Home – Goes to the first cell of the sheet
3. Ctrl+End – Goes to the last active cell of the sheet
4. Ctrl+Spacebar – Select entire column
5. Shift+Spacebar – Select entire row
6. Shift+Up/Down Arrow – Select adjacent column
7. Shift+Left/Right Arrow – Select adjacent row
8. Ctril +Up Arrow – Select first active cell in a column
9. Ctrl + Down Arrow – Select last active cell in a column
10. Ctrl+Shift+Up Arrow - Selecting all rows from a particular cell to the beginning of the row
11. Ctrl+Shift+Down Arrow - Selecting all rows from a particular cell to the end of the row
12. Ctrl+Shift+Home – Select all cells from active cell to the first active cell in the sheet
13. Ctrl+Shift+End – Select all cells from active cell to the last active cell in the sheet

Switching

14. Ctrl+Page Up – Switch between sheets in the same worksheet from left to right
15. Ctrl+Page Down – Switch between sheets in the same worksheet from right to left
16. Ctrl+Tab – Switch between worksheets
17. Alt+F11 – Open VBA Editor

Creation

18. Shift+ F11 – Creates New sheet
19. Ctrl+F3 – Define name for a cell
20. F3 – Paste name for a cell
21. Ctrl+; – Pastes Current date in the active cell
22. Ctrl+Shift+; – Pastes Current time in the active cell
23. Alt+F1 – Creates a chart using the active region
24. Alt+F2 -Displays the Save as dialog box

Formatting

25. Ctrl+1 – Format cells
26. Ctrl+2, Ctrl+B – Bold
27. Ctrl+3, Ctrl+i – Italics
28. Ctrl+4, Ctrl+U – Underline
29. Ctrl+5 – Strikethrough
30. Ctrl+9 – Hides selected rows
31. Ctrl+0 – Hides selected columns
32. Ctrl+D – Copy formatting of top most cell
33. Ctrl+G / F5 – Go to box
34. Ctrl+K – Hyperlink
36. Ctrl+L -Create List
37. Ctrl+R – Fill Right / Copy content and formats of leftmost cell in a selection

Formula:

38. =+FunctionName+Ctrl+A – Inserts new function
39. Ctrl+Shift+Enter – Array formula
40. Shift+F3 – Opens Formula Dialogue Box

Fell free to share this post using the buttons below. Or just proudly show off your Spreadhseet Ninja skills on your own.

In the past couple of months of working on Excel and VBA Macros, I have been exposed to a few challenges which in the course of time, I have overcome. So, I thought I would share them with my beloved readers. This section: Excel Tips aims at sharing the small tips and tricks that I have come across which makes life easier for anyone working with Excel or VBA Macros. Cheers!

Keyboard shortcuts are like the secret tools of every power Excel user. If we use too much of Excel in our day-to-day work, these handy Keyboard shortcuts on Excell cell selection will save a lot of time, and also save you from dragging the mouse into frustration land.

So here, we go.

Selecting entire Column (vertical ) : – Ctrl + Spacebar

Selecting entire Row (horizontal ) : – Shift + Spacebar

Selecting all rows & columns : – Ctrl + A

Selecting first active cell  : Ctrl + Home

Selecting last active cell : Ctrl + End

Selecting all columns from a particular cell to the beginning of the column: Ctrl + Shift + Left

Selecting all columns from a particular cell to the end of the column: Ctrl + Shift + Right

Selecting all rows from a particular cell to the beginning of the row : Ctrl + Shift + Up

Selecting all rows from a particular cell to the end of the row : Ctrl + Shift + Down

Selecting first active cell in a row: Ctrl + Left

Selecting last active cell in a row: Ctrl + Right

Selecting first active cell in a column: Ctrl + Up

Selecting last active cell in a column: Ctrl + Down

Do let us know if these simple tips helped you out, and leave your comments. Cheerio and happy exceling.

In the past couple of months of working on Excel and VBA Macros, I have been exposed to a few challenges which in the course of time, I have overcome. So, I thought I would share them with my beloved readers. This section: Excel Tips aims at sharing the small tips and tricks that I have come across which makes life easier for anyone working with Excel or VBA Macros. Cheers!

Here we’ll be focussing on how to select a range dynamically and perform further operations to it etc.
For e.g. If we have a Sheet “Input” of which one cell is required say column B, and we need to perform some kind of mathematical operation on them – viz. average, sum, etc. we need to do that by selecting the entire range of non-empty values of those two cells.

The problem here is that the number of entries in column A will vary from time to time, but we want a command button which automatically knows the amount of non-empty values and accordingly runs the mathematical operation. This is known as Dynamic Range Selection.

In other words, in case 1, if Cell B has values from B2 to B300, The Average formula should read: =AVERAGE(B2:B300), and in case the number of entries increases, the second input parameter in the average formula should change. The way to overcome this is a simple VBA code which records the number of entries in a particular cell and stores in a variable defined as a Long. This is:

mlngRange = CLng(Sheets("Input").Range("B2", Range("B2").End(xlDown)).Count)

Here, mlngRange is the Long variable in which the number of values in cell B from B2 onwards is recorded. Please remember if the declaration of mlngRange is done as a Long, include CLng as VBA by default, processes output as a String.

If the start point of selection is to be changed from B2 to say B4, this needs to be edited in the above code.

Limitation: The limitation of this code is that it recognises the first empty value in a cell, and considers it as the end-point. In case of column B having a few empty values in between, the remaining cell values will not be counted in mlngRange.

Hence, the next code is necessary. This code is unlike the previous one, which counts in a downward direction from the top columns to the bottom ones. Instead, this code counts in an upward direction, from the last non-empty cell onwards. The code is:
mlngRange = CLng(Worksheets("Input").Cells(Rows.Count, 2).End(xlUp).Row) - 1

Here, the ’2′ denotes the Column. As in A=1, B=2, etc. The (-1) in the end denotes that the first value in Column B should not be considered as in this case, Cell B1 is a label. If the count is to be considered from B2, this should be replaced by (-2)  and so on.

So what after storing the value of the range in a range variable?

Performing mathematical operations:

The output formula can be:

ActiveCell.Formula = "=AVERAGE(B2:B" & mlngRange + 1 & ")"

Please let me know if you face any issues with this. Cheerio!