Why Learn Excel 2007 Keyboard Shortcuts?

There are people who believe that Microsoft Office Excel is just for balancing your personal budget or your checkbook. While it's true that you can use Excel for those tasks, there are so many other things that Excel can do! The implications for storing meaningful data in an office setting are obvious. Any time you need to create a graph of sales numbers for last quarter, Excel is the first place you turn to, right?

However if you do some searching for novel Excel uses, you will turn up some very interesting results. How about using Excel to track your new diet? Maybe Excel is what you need to help you keep up your New Year's resolution this year?

At any rate, Excel 2007 can be a great tool for getting things done and it is the most popular spreadsheet application around. If you're dealing with numbers, dates, or any large amounts of data, Excel is the place to go.

As with one of my previous articles: 11 Best Keyboard Shortcuts for Outlook 2007, I am going to mention 13 of the most useful (and perhaps most under-utilized) keyboard shortcuts Excel 2007 has to offer.

Use them to keep both hands on the keyboard and navigate faster, creating charts, workbooks, and data groups with all the ease of some kind of super-calculating super-computer. Well, maybe not, but you can still make funny "beep boop" noises while you do it, right?

Mastering Excel 2007 Keyboard Shortcuts?

Without further ado, let's get on with the shortcuts, shall we?

1. ALT+F1 - This creates a chart out of the data in the current range (selected cells). This is the most well known feature of Excel, and now you know a new way to use it!
2. ALT+SHIFT+F1 - This inserts a new worksheet into the workbook.
3. F6 - This switches between the worksheet, Ribbon, task pane, and Zoom controls. This is probably the most useful shortcut of all. This cool shortcut is also the most beloved to the all anti-mouse users out there.
4. SHIFT+F6 - This does the reverse of the F6 shortcut.
5. CTRL+F6 - This switches to the next workbook window when multiple workbook windows are open.
6. CTRL+SHIFT+$ - This applies the currency format to the selected cells. Great for those times when dealing with monetary data.
7. CTRL+SHIFT+# - This applies the date format with a default order of day, month, and year.
8. CTRL+; - This enters the current date in the selected cells.
9. CTRL+SHIFT+@ - This applies the time format with the default value of hour, minute and AM/PM.
10. CTRL+SHIFT+: - This enters the current time in the selected cells.
11. CTRL+` - This alternates between showing the value of a cell and the formula in the worksheet. Great for complex worksheets.
12. CTRL+D - This uses the fill down command on the selected cells. Fill down copies the content and format of the topmost cell into the cells below.
13. CTRL+R - This uses the fill right command on the selected cells. Fill right copies the content and format of the leftmost cell to the cells to the right.

There you have it. Not quite a top-ten list, but since there are more than ten shortcuts listed here, consider the three extras as a bonus just for you! These shortcuts will have you well on your way to charting, calculating, and organizing your data like the pro that you are.

Hop to it, but don't forget to hop back here to TST for more Excel articles, coming real soon. And while you're here, why don't you tell me your favorite shortcut or feature in Excel 2007? Have you ever used it for novel purposes? Discuss in the comments.

... What's that you say? Didn't see a shortcut for the action you need to perform? Well you can click here to see Microsoft's official list of all the keyboard shortcuts in Excel 2007, and see if you can find it.

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