Shortcuts - Word and Excel

This one's for all my friends and colleagues who have patiently read the blog, waiting for something they can really use. You use Word and Excel all the time and know all the basics.

You're ready for some shortcuts to save you time, but you don't wanna search websites, and you know the help key can be a real pain. This one's for you.

Home and End take you to the beginning and end of a line in Word and of a row in Excel. They also work in most pop-up windows, in Windows Explorer if you still use it, or most places when you need to rename a file. They also work in the formula line in Excel, or in the cell if you're editing text there.

Ctrl-Home takes you to the top of the spreadsheet in Excel, and Ctrl-End takes you to the bottom.

Ctrl-Enter to enter text or numbers into multiple cells in Excel (especially non-contiguous cells). Highlight all the cells you want to enter text into. Type the text, then Ctrl-Enter.

Zoom changes the magnification at which you view the file (in simpler terms, how big it looks on the screen). It has presets of 25%, 50%, etc. - but you can enter any zoom level you want directly into the zoom box (for example, 26% or 73% or 193%) - from 10% to 500%. Especially useful for zooming in to fine-tuning on graphic details, or out for page setup options.

Tools, Options is where you set or change settings in Excel, Word and any other Windows application.

Toolbars can be customized 100%. You start with 2 default toolbars (Standard and Formatting). You can have as few as 0 toolbars showing, or as many as you want. To play with the toolbar settings, Tools, Customize.

I like to keep Toolbars mean and lean - only showing the tools I like and use, and removing all others. Very useful tools in Excel - and in Word if you use tables - are Insert Row, Insert Column, Delete Row and Delete Column.

Menus can also be customized. if there are commands you don't use or think you will never use, those can be deleted. Commands can be added, too. Tools, Customize.

But my favorite shortcut is one I have used extensively while writing and editing this blog entry. Ctrl-Right Arrow moves the cursor ahead (to the right) one word at a time, and Ctrl-Left Arrow moves it backwards, or to the left. This works in all sorts of places.

Oh. You do use your arrow keys, don't you?