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10 Excel Shortcuts That Will Make You Look Like a Wizard

top 10 excel shortcuts

When I published the post about the top 10 Excel formulas, I had no idea how much people would respond to that. TONS of people have asked for videos, so being the man of the people that I am, I’m going to deliver on that….but not today.

Today is about Excel shortcuts.

When I went to my first internship many years ago, I remember one of the finance managers telling me there’s no reason to ever touch the mouse when using Excel. I work with someone today who I’ve heard say the same almost verbatim. I guess some things never change.

Never might be a bit strong, but here are 10 ways to bypass the mouse to get results faster in Excel.

1. ALT, D, F, F

Highlight the header row of the table in question, enter ALT, D, F, F and voila – you can quickly toggle data filters on/off.

2. ALT, D, F, S

You ever find yourself in a massive spreadsheet with filtered rows but you can’t figure out where the filter is? This Excel shortcut clears data filter criteria but keeps the filters on the dataset.

3. CTRL + (-)

Enter this command when your cursor is anywhere in the spreadsheet and you get the delete menu, offering four options : 1) Shift cells left 2) shift cells up 3) entire row 4) entire column.

4. CTRL + R

Instead of copying and pasting or dragging for all eternity when you want a formula to fill to the right, highlight the range where you want the formula repeated (beginning with the cell with the formula in it) and key CTRL + R.

5. CTRL + D

You can also key in CTRL + D if you want a formula to fill down. It works exactly like CTRL + R, just going vertically instead of horizontally.

How to get the other 5 formulas

I’ll send you the other half of my top ten list and a printable PDF version for you when you join my email list by clicking the button below. It’s 100% free and if you want to bail after getting the list then so be it, but I have many other tips and tricks to share so you can spend more time optimizing your spreadsheets and less time on Google searching for what you don’t kno.

To more efficient spreadsheeting!

Click to Instantly Download My Free Excel Wizard Cheatsheet

Comments

      • Yeah that makes it so much easier sometimes

        Also the Ctrl + Shift + Arrows to select to the end of the data – But if it is all blank it will just select every single cell in that direction till the end of the sheet

        Ctrl + Shift + End to select all the data till the end of the sheet including columns and rows. The above one is restricted to either columns or rows.

        Alt + down arrow on the header to open the filter list. For this you can have the filter on already or you don’t need to toggle the filter on but still be able to do it

        Ctrl + Alt + V to paste special – helps a lot especially when you want to transpose

        This isn’t exactly a keyboard shortcut but I love this as a quick formatting shortcut that some people miss: Format Painter.

        • Thanks, Pooja. These are great ones. Oddly enough, I never really use the paste special value shortcuts. I think ALT,E,S,V is the specific one for pasting values that I see people use a lot.

          You can never have too many shortcuts!

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