Dead Mouse Challenge – 40 Excel Keyboard Shortcuts and No Mouse!

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Nico Mellett

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In the video above, I demonstrate just how powerful keyboard shortcuts can be when using Microsoft Excel. I put the mouse aside and just fly through them one by one. If you’ve been meaning to learn a few new keyboard shortcuts but not sure where to start, then this one is for you. Just pick three to five shortcuts that you can see will be really useful, jot them down and practice them for the next week or so. Then pick a few more, and repeat. Good luck, and have fun!

VIDEO TRANSCRIPT

Hey everyone! My name is Nico and in today’s video we will blitz through 40 Excel keyboard shortcuts. Now anyone who’s worked with me will know that I LOVE keyboard shortcuts. They are by far the most efficient way to get better at Excel. The reason is because you can just use them all throughout the day, making everything you do just a little bit faster, a little bit more efficient and more FUN! We’ll just run through them one by one, I’ll explain what I’m doing and we’ll tally them up as we go. I’m not going to use the mouse at all so as an extra challenge I’m just going to put it aside for the whole video. All right, let’s do this…

All right, so I’m not going to use the mouse at all I’ll just leave it up here somewhere and I’ll start off by clearing a bit of desktop real estate, so I’ll press Ctrl-F1 to collapse the ribbon, Ctrl-Shift-U to collapse the formula bar and I want to get rid of my grid lines, so I’ll press Alt,W,V,G for view gridlines.

All right, then I want to add sum totals in row 15 so I’ll press Alt = to AutoSum, and I’ll navigate with my cursor keys to G11. Alt= to AutoSum. Now I want to copy that formula across, so I’ll press Ctrl-R for copy right. This one in G11 I’ll copy down with Ctrl-D I can actually select a range with Shift and Right Arrow, and I can press Ctrl-R again to copy it across to the right. Same thing up here, I can select that entire range with Shift and Down Arrow and then Ctrl-D for down.

All right so let’s inspect these formulas, I’ll press Ctrl-~ or Ctrl-backtick, the one underneath the Escape key, and we can inspect the formulas. When we’re done looking at our formulas I’ll press Ctrl-~ or Ctrl-backtick again, all right, so I’ll press Ctrl-Up to shoot to the top, Ctrl-Shift-Right to select all of those headings, Ctrl-B to make them bold and Alt,H,A,C for align center.

All right, Ctrl-Down I’m going to jump to C19 and I want to fill this entire range, so I was holding Shift and using the arrow keys, I want to fill this range with the values up here, so in C19 I’ll say =C11 and instead of pressing Enter, I’ll press Ctrl-Enter so it fills the range with that formula.

Okay, so let’s jump back up to row 11 Ctrl-Shift-Right and Ctrl-C to copy Ctrl-Down down I want to paste the formatting down in row 19. so Alt,E,S,T for paste formats and then I’ll move down with the cursor key and press F4 to redo, redo, redo, redo, whoops… we don’t want to do the bottom one so I’ll press Ctrl-Z to undo okay one last thing I’ll select this entire table and press alt equals again and we’ll auto sum all those blank cells all right there we go we’ve done heaps here so I’ll press Ctrl-S to save, then Ctrl-PageDown, to move to the next worksheet, Ctrl-PageUp to the previous one, Ctrl-PageDown for the next one.

Okay there’s a ton of formatting here that we don’t need, all of this cell fill. And I’ll press Ctrl-A to select the whole range and press it again to select the whole worksheet then Alt,H,H,N for no fill. I’ll navigate back to the heading here, Shift-Down and Alt,O,R,A for row auto fit.

Now we can also see there’s a typo in row… in row three, so I’ll press F2, move to the typo and change it, press Enter. Now I’ll shuffle down to row five, Shift-Spacebar to select the whole row and Ctrl-B for bold. I can now also see that these columns are all too narrow so I’ll select a few of them and then press Ctrl-Spacebar, which is select column. I could also do that first, Ctrl-Spacebar and then Shift-Right,Right,Right to select all of those columns. Now Alt,O,C,A for column autofit and now that we can see everything clearly I can navigate this range with my arrow keys or Ctrl-Down, Ctrl-Right to navigate around within it, so what I’ll do, Ctrl-Shift-L to add an auto filter.

You can see it’s added the auto filter drop downs and when you are on one of these auto filter dropdowns I can press Alt-Down Arrow to activate it and then just select whatever I want and press enter okay so we’ve sorted by value now go to salesperson Alt-Down and I want to untick everything but I want to keep Decmus George okay so we’ve done all the analysis that we want to do then I can clear the filter by pressing Alt,A,C.

Okay, so I’ll press Ctrl-Down arrow so that it jumps to the next blank cell and we can see there’s a blank cell in row 24. if I press Alt-Down Arrow in the blank cell then it gives me a drop down list which actually shows all of the values that have been used so far in this column so Alt-Down Arrow and I add Decmus George in there Ctrl-Down arrow to get to the next one Alt-Down Arrow and I’ll pick Anne Frances. Now I’m down in row 32 or somewhere, I just want to get all the way back to the top so I’ll press Ctrl-Home which takes me to A1.

Okay, let’s sort our range back in its original order, Alt-Down Arrow so it’s smallest to largest, Enter. Now I’ll hold Shift and press the Down arrow to select all the Januarys and then Ctrl-Shift-7 puts a little skinny border around the range so I can do that anywhere I want Ctrl-Shift-7 and add a little border around it, Ctrl-Shift-7. I’ll just get rid of those grid lines again Alt,W,V,G so we can see a bit clearer.

Now we’ve done whatever analysis it is that we wanted to do, so now I want to get rid of all these grid lines so I’ll press Ctrl-A to just select the whole lot and then Ctrl-Shift-Underscore to get rid of any borders while everything is selected. I can now go Alt,H,B,A to add all borders and then I can press Alt,H,B,T to add a thick border all the way around.

Okay, then with the cursor anywhere within the range I can press Ctrl-T to turn it into a proper table. I’ll press Enter and then we can see it’s now a proper Excel table. Now I will press Ctrl-F3 to take me to the Name Manager, Alt-E for edit and I can give my table a name. I’ll just call it Sales. Okay I’ll escape out of that, Ctrl-Home to go back to the top and I’ll navigate back to price. Now you’ll see if I press Ctrl-Spacebar it doesn’t select the entire column but it just selects the column within the table, so I’ll press Ctrl-Shift-1 to give us thousand separators and two decimals. Then I’ll go Ctrl-left, Ctrl-up and I want to add a comment to cell B5 so I’ll press Shift F2 and I’ll say “Remember to compare to prior year…” and I’ll escape out of that… And that’s it! That’s 40 shortcuts!

I think that’ll do for now, hope you enjoyed it and hope you learned something. Let us know which ones were your favourite, did you learn any new ones, how many of them did you know already and also let me know if there are any that you think should have made the list but did not! Thanks guys, remember to thumbs up if you liked it, click subscribe if you want some more tips and remember to click the bell button to be notified the next time a video comes out Alright, see you next time.

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