Cntrl + Shift + Arrow to highlight an array of empty or full cells.F4 to toggle between anchor references in a formula.
This article is broken down into 2 sections for shortcuts: Windows and Mac. While you can use it on Mac, you’ll be much more limited.
Mac vs WindowsĮxcel is a Microsoft application and is therefore optimized for windows operating systems. This article outlines 32 shortcuts you should start with today to use Excel without the mouse and increase your efficiency. Once Excel is open, keep your browser open behind your Excel and look up the shortcut for any action for which you don’t immediately know the shortcut. For any action you want to take, force yourself to ignore the mouse. The key is to always look for keyboard shortcuts. Personally, I started in an analytical role with almost zero knowledge of Excel, and I became keyboard proficient in less than 6 months. That’s why learning to use Excel without a mouse is so important. In addition, the further you progress in your career, the faster you need to produce results. Nobody likes to get bogged down clicking buttons with the mouse while their train of thought moves forward.
When you press Esc to exit border-drawing mode, any borders you subsequently apply (by whatever means) are applied in the same color you selected.If you’re a data analyst, a business analyst, a financial professional (or anyone who uses Excel for that matter) then you know the feeling of wanting to move faster in Excel. The border is drawn on the cells as you specify. (You can tell because the mouse pointer changes to a small pencil shape.) Move near the border you want, hold down the mouse button, and drag the mouse. Pick the color you want, and Excel kicks into border-drawing mode. Hover over it, and you'll see a palette of colors you can choose. The option you are interested in is the Line Color option. Excel displays a whole bunch of choices for applying borders. Just display the Home tab of the ribbon and then click the down-arrow next to the Borders tool (in the Font group). Just make sure you pick the color you want used before you click on the side of the cell where you want that color used.Īnother way you can change the border color is to use the border drawing tools Excel provides. Just as you can specify a different border type for each side of a cell, you can also specify a different border color for each side of the cell. Using the controls in the dialog box, specify the borders for the cell as you normally would.Using the Color drop-down list, specify a color you want to use for borders.The Border tab of the Format Cells dialog box. Excel displays the Border tab of the Format Cells dialog box. Click the More Borders option at the bottom of the list.You'll see a list of borders you can apply to the cell. In the Font group, click the down-arrow next to the Borders tool.Make sure the Home tab of the ribbon is displayed.Select the cells whose border colors you want to change.You can specify different colors for your borders by following these steps:
You are not limited to black borders, however. This is handy for separating different pieces of information within the same data table and for, well, just making your data look better. You probably already know that Excel allows you to add borders to your cells.