Spreadsheet Navigation and Keyboard Shortcuts

Navigation and Selection. In this section, we're going to take a look at how you can easily navigate within the cells of your spreadsheet using keyboard shortcuts that facilitate quick and easy navigation within your cells, columns, and rows in your spreadsheet.

So, let's start off with very simple navigation. If I need to navigate one cell at a time, then the keyboard keys I'll look to on my keyboard are the arrow keys. If I press the Down Arrow key, I move down one cell.

If I keep pressing it, I move down several cells. Now, I'm in row nine. I want to navigate one cell to the right, so I'll use the Right Arrow key.

Then I'll continue pressing the Right Arrow key until I get to the word 'down.' And then I'll press the Down Arrow key several times until I get to the word 'left.' You can pretty much figure out what will happen here.

I'll use the Left Arrow key to get to the word 'up,' and then I'll go up. I guarantee you people do not take our courses to learn how to do this. They already know how to do this in Excel.

We want to show you another way that you can navigate cells besides moving one cell at a time. This is going to involve a combination of two keyboard keys, the Control key and the direction where you want to navigate to. If I'm at the word 'start here' and I quickly want to get to the word 'down,' the Control key will act like a booster rocket.

If I hold on to Control and press the Right Arrow key, I jump to the word 'down.' And then, if I want to get from the word 'down' to the word 'left,' Control + Down Arrow. Now, I don't even have to take my hand or my finger off the Control key.

If I just press the Control key and use the arrow keys, I can press once to get to the word 'up.' If I press the Left Arrow key, then get to the text 'start here' by pressing Up, then Right, Down, Left, Up. I can move up and down and I can move left and right.

Now, when you're able to do this, I usually tell students they've learned a very valuable skill because if there was ever a situation where someone was walking up behind them at their desk, they could do this to make themselves look busy. So, this is a very useful skill. Don't tell anyone I said that!

So, that is quickly navigating around a group of cells. Now, we want to take a look at how you can select cells. So, I'm going to move further down the spreadsheet.

I'm going to select the cell that says 'Shift Key' because that's what we'll actually need to do. Press and hold the Shift key. Then, I'll use the arrow keys to extend my range.

If I press the Right Arrow, I select not only the cell that contains 'Shift Key,' but also the cell to the right that contains 'Right Arrow.' If I keep pressing the Right Arrow, I'm continuing to extend my range. Now, I want to select all the cells below my current selection.

So, the Down Arrow key again, while holding down Shift, allows me to select multiple rows. Now, I'm going to go backwards. I could have also selected the column I'm currently in by pressing the Down Arrow key and then pressing the Right Arrow key to select the table as well.

So, this allows you to move one cell at a time in any direction or multiple rows or columns, depending on how much you've selected initially. So, the Shift key is like the pivot foot in basketball. It's the one foot that can't move, but it can extend anywhere around that initial pivot foot.

All right. Now, let's move down and take a look at a much larger table. You want to select all the headers in this table.

So, this is going to require a combination of CTRL + Shift + Arrow. Control will allow us to navigate quickly and Shift will select. So, Control + Shift + Right Arrow allows me to select all the headers in the table.

Control + Shift + Down Arrow selects all the rows for that table. Now, I could also press the Up Arrow and then press the Down Arrow. I could also press Control + Shift + Down to select the first column and then Control + Shift + Right to select the rest of the table.

So, those are keyboard shortcuts for navigating and selecting data within your spreadsheet. I'm going to move down to about row 56, and it says, actually right before row 56 in row 54, it says, 'Are you lost?' That's just reminding us that if we need to get back to the top of the spreadsheet, we can simply press Control + Home. Home is considered the starting place in Excel, and that's cell A1.

From here, all the information emanates from this spot. Now, if I want to get to the end of the spreadsheet, not necessarily the entire spreadsheet, but to the end of the data that's in the spreadsheet, I'll press Control + END. That's the opposite corner.

Control + END takes me to the last cell in the workbook where data has been entered. If I want to get back to the beginning, Control + Home. Now, I'm going to move back down and I'll use Page Down without pressing anything else.

Page Down moves me down an entire page. Then, I'll start to move over to here and let's say I want to navigate to another sheet. I don't want to navigate within cells or within a range.

So, the keyboard shortcut that's going to take me to the next page in the workbook, and if you think of a tab as being a page, then that's the analogy you'll keep in your mind, is Control + Page Down. If I press Control + Page Down, I go to Page 2. Guess what I would need to press to get back to navigation? Control + Page Up.

And so this allows me to navigate the sheets in my workbook and makes me a little bit more efficient because I'll have to depend less on the mouse. On the Mac, you may not have Page Up and Page Down keys. We let you know that if you use Option + Right Arrow and Left Arrow, you can use that to navigate the sheets in your Excel workbook if you're on a Mac laptop.

Now, I'll just press Control + Home, and that completes our section on navigation. You're able to easily select cells, ranges, as well as navigate them using these handy keyboard shortcuts.