Tuesday, November 08, 2005

Letting Go the Mouse - [1] Using the SHIFT key to select cells in Excel

I have written here numerous times about keyboard shortcuts. There are so many and as you get to know then they become a lot quicker than using the mouse. However there are so many that it can be quite daunting looking at a list like this one http://www.jethromanagement.biz/ex_cuts.htm and knowing which ones will save you time and which ones won't.

This article is the first in a series entitled Letting Go the Mouse and is a guide to letting go the mouse and starting to use the keyboard.

The first thing I teach a mouse user who is oh-so-slow at using Excel is to use the keyboard to select cells.
How many times have you seen someone (or done it yourself) trying to select some data off the edge of the screen only to end up selecting 14000 rows or 85 columns because it scrolled too fast? Scrolling back up they take forever to get to the spot they wanted and usually go straight past and repeat this several times. It is frustrating for the person doing it and painful to watch.

LET GO THE MOUSE!

Use the keyboard for this. OK I will let you use the mouse to locate and select the top left cell of the selection. Of course you could select any corner of the selection but lets start with the most obvious, the top left cell.

Lets say we want to select 3 columns and 8 rows.

  • Hold down the SHIFT key. Either one, but don't let go til I say.

  • Now click the right arrow button 2 times - that will get you selecting 3 cells - the one you started on and the two to the right of it.

  • Now click the down arrow key 7 times. Now you can let go of the SHIFT key. You should have selected 3 columns and 8 rows from where you started.


    • The key to this selection process is the SHIFT key. SHIFT allows you select a range of contiguous cells. That is cells that are adjacent to each other.
    Experiment while holding the SHIFT key down with all the arrow keys one after the other.

    Next time I will talk about selecting entire data or blank ranges.


    Posted by: Jethro | 10:52 AM |