Dyota's blog

Excel: shortcuts

Forward, back, halfcircle, Enter

A friend challenged me recently to use Excel, entirely without touching the mouse.

This is the result! Day by day, I would add to a list of shortcuts that I "know". This isn't an exhaustive list of all of the shortcuts that I know, only those that I recorded since maybe July. Some of these have successfully made it into my muscle memory, especially the Power Query ones.

The sequential nature of a lot of these combos remind me of playing Street Fighter, a game I loved playing a few years ago. I don't play so much any more, but I amuse myself my imagining that I get to pull off a Critical Art combo every time I do a shortcut in Excel.

Sometimes, it also feels like I'm using Vim, where the sequence is acronymic (e.g. Alt, H, FC for Home, Font Colour, or Alt, H, B, B for Home, Border, Bottom).

Combination Effect
F12 Save As
Alt E, S Paste special
Alt + 7 Bullet point (when editing text)
Alt J, T, I, D Change Pivot Table data source
Alt, R, T, N New note

Power Query

Combination Effect
Alt, H, A, PN, L Launch Power Query Editor
Alt, 2 Launch Power Query Editor (* I put this button on the second position of my Quick Access ribbon)
(in PQ editor) Alt H, C, Enter Close and Load
(in PQ editor) Alt, H, Q Advanced Editor

Sheets

Combination Effect
Alt W, VG Gridlines
Alt, H, O, T Change tab colour
Alt H, O, R Rename sheet
Alt O, H, H Hide sheet
Alt O, H, U Unhide sheet
Shift + F11 New worksheet
Alt E, L Delete sheet

Column and row manipulation

Combination Effect
Alt O, C, W Change column width
Alt O, R, E, Change row height
Alt O, C, A Resize columns to fit
Ctrl+9 Hide row
Ctrl+shift+9 Unhide row
Ctrl+0 Hide columns
Ctrl+shift+0 Unhide column

Formatting

Combination Effect
Alt H, W Wrap text
Alt, H, B, B Bottom double-border
Alt, H, FC Font colour
Alt, H, H Cell highlight
Alt H, F, P Format Painter
Alt, ZN, AN Accounting number format
Alt, H, K Thousands-comma-separated number format
Alt, H, N, G, Enter General number format
Alt, H, 9 Decrease decimal point
Alt, H, 0 Increase decimal point
Shift+F10, F Format Number dialog
Ctrl + ` Show formulas in cells
-*#,##0,,.00"M";[red]* #,##0,,.00"M"- ;0 millions of dollars number format

Data

Combination Effect
Alt, A, W, G Goal-seek
Alt, H, FI, S Make number sequence (must be selecting a cell with a number in it)
Ctrl+G, Alt+S GoTo Special
Shift+F10, O Sort
Shift+F10, E Filter
Alt, Down, E (when in filter dropdown menu) focus on search box

Tables and Pivot Tables

Combination Effect
Ctrl + T Create table
Alt JT, R Banded rows on/off

Pictures

Combination Effect
Alt JP, F, S Picture shadow
Alt JP, F, W Change picture width

#excel