Microsoft Excel AWESOME Keyboard Shortcuts

The fact about MS Excel is that it is a program, and not a programming language, which means that you don’t need any specialized qualification or skill to master it. Like the other programs in the MS suite, it is best learned by practice.

From experience, we would suggest these three ways of learning Microsoft Excel shortcuts:

-       By practicing: the MS Excel program is inbuilt into the MS Office bouquet. So, till the next update, you can keep doing it as much as you can till you become completely familiar with all its features

-       By watching YouTube or other videos: you are likely to find very well-made material from users, who will want to share their knowledge with you on YouTube or other video channels

-       Through learning platforms: with the emergence of the Massive Open Online Courses (MOOC) market, a good number of reputable online learning platforms offer a lot of courses. It is not difficult to find a huge number of these that offer complete learning of MS Excel. Our strong recommendation goes out to this virtual training course from SimplivLearning. It offers the most intuitive means of using shortcuts in Excel in just one hour of live online learning.

You can implement any of the above-suggested methods to learn shortcuts in MS Excel. Alternatively, you can also visit the MS Excel keyboard shortcuts from Microsoft itself. It is a very useful tool for those who want to master shortcuts on the keyboard to put to use in Excel.

You can, but even with the best effort, what you will learn in 5 days will only help you handle basic Excel. You cannot expect to master this program in such a short duration, because it is feature-packed.

Microsoft offers certification in MS Excel. It is part of the Microsoft Office Specialist: Excel Associate (Office 2019) certification. You can read more about this certification here.

Microsoft does not offer free MS Excel certification, but you have the option of availing of their free voucher, which is subject to certain conditions. A few learning platforms offer free courses that prepare a learner for taking up the exam, but the certification cost from Microsoft is $ 100.

There is no fixed cost for MS Excel training. The cost depends on the extent, the depth of the training offered, and the location in which the training is taken. It can vary from a few dollars to a few hundred dollars. 

There is no fixed or prescribed duration for getting an MS Excel certification. The process of getting to understand the details of the exam and completing other formalities could take less than a month.

The Microsoft Office Specialist: Excel Associate (Office 2019) certification comes with roughly 150 hours of training. This is considered sufficient to pass the exam and become ready to face the job market.

Not if you have been working on Excel for a while and have gained a level of fluency and proficiency in this application.

However, certification can be difficult for someone who has just started out learning Excel. The myriad functions under formulas and functions, charts and objects, or workbooks, can be confusing for a newbie. For freshers to score 700-the marks needed to pass the exam-can be a tough ask.

An MS Excel certification in itself is no guarantee for job placement; yet, expertise and certification in Excel can certainly greatly enhance your prospects of landing a fairly attractive job. MS Excel-certified professionals take up many positions/disciplines that are very vital for organizations. These are some of them:

-       Data analysis

-       Business intelligence analysis

-       Accounting and auditing

-       Financial analysis

-       Technology

-       Retail

-       BFSI

-       Cost estimation

-       Project management

-       Education

-       Digital Marketing

-      Market research and analysis

Certification in MS Excel is certainly worth it considering these factors:

-       The variety of jobs open for those with MS Excel certifications

-       The pay they earn-up to $84,000

-       The short duration of the certification process and the relatively low cost of the exam

MS Excel certification costs $100.

As we just saw, an MS Excel certification opens the doors to employment in a variety of niche areas. Earning this credential from Microsoft itself- the sole owner of this proprietary software-places you are among the top job contenders even in the global market, since this certification is valid globally.

Every MS Excel certification is valid for one year. You have to keep taking it up every year to renew the certificate and to stay updated with the latest version.

The feature of Microsoft certification renewal is that it does not cost anything if you possess a valid and relevant Microsoft associate, specialty, and expert certification.

Again, there are no fixed durations for MS Excel training. Depending on your level of proficiency, you can gain expertise in the core features of this program in a few hours, if you are under proper guidance and training.

Many study groups and materials come in handy for becoming an expert at MS Excel. As we saw, self-help, study resources, and Microsoft itself is helpful for learning Excel. You could seriously consider the course we mentioned earlier as a highly reliable learning aid.

On its Support page, Microsoft has listed a number of shortcuts:

1.     Ctrl + X: Cut the selected item

2.     Ctrl + C (or Ctrl + Insert): Copy the selected item

3.     Ctrl + V (or Shift + Insert): Paste the selected item

4.     Ctrl + Z: Undo an action

5.     Alt + Tab: Switch between open apps

6.     Alt + F4: Close the active item, or exit the active app

7.     Windows logo key + L: Lock your PC

8.     Windows logo key + D: Display and hide the desktop

9.     F2: Rename the selected item

10. F3: Search for a file or folder in File Explorer

11. F4: Display the address bar list in File Explorer

12. F5: Refresh the active window

13. F6: Cycle through screen elements in a window or on the desktop

14. F10: Activate the Menu bar in the active app

15. Alt + A: Set focus to the first icon in the Suggested actions menu

16. Alt + F8: Show your password on the sign-in screen

17. Alt + Esc: Cycle through items in the order in which they were opened

18. Alt + underlined letter: Perform the command for that letter

19. Alt + Enter: Display properties for the selected item

20. Alt + Spacebar: Open the shortcut menu for the active window

Despite having a general reputation as a staid program, MS Excel actually has a few interesting features to enliven the operation. Did you know, for instance, that you can play sudoku on Excel?

Microsoft has enabled a good number of cool keyboard shortcuts. You could consider the MS Office key the coolest one for Microsoft. Once you press this key, which is placed two spaces after the space bar, you can perform a whole host of features such as opening OneNote, LinkedIn, MS Outlook, Teams, and so on.

There are over 100 shortcut keys available for Microsoft. You can find these on its Support page here.

Traditionally, most keyboards have 12 function keys. However, a few manufacturers have introduced 24 function keys. This system is yet to catch up, and it could be a while till it becomes universal.

Apple desktop computer keyboards have been built with 19 keyboard function keys from their earliest times.

There are several secret, meaning not so commonly known or used shortcuts, in any keyboard. Let us list just five of these:

-       Windows+ E: Opens My Computer without you having to click on the icon

-       Windows+ L: Locks the screen temporarily and keeps all the windows you were working on open so that you can resume from where you had left off

-       Windows + T: Opens the taskbar, using which you can just use the arrow keys to switch between the multiple programs you are working on

-       Ctrl+ Shift+ Esc: Opens the Task manager

-       Windows+ Up arrow: Maximizes the screen; Windows+ Down arrow minimizes it.

This is easy. Just right-click on your desktop, go to View, and point to the last item there, namely, Show desktop items.

View this on the Microsoft Support page:

MS Excel has a number of inbuilt tricks that, when used consistently, can speed up work. Let us look at a few of these:

Select All: 

We are all used to using Ctrl-A for this operation. A cool MS Excel trick would be to select just one button at the left corner of the rows.

Alternate between different Excel files:

Similar to Firefox, you can open additional MS Excel files by just clicking Ctrl-T

Create a new shortcut menu:

You can add a new shortcut menu at the top, in addition to the normal ones, namely Save, Undo Typing, and Repeat Typing. All that you need to do is File->Options->Quick Access Toolbar, add Cut and Copy from the left column to the right, and then save it. This will add two more shortcuts to the top menu.

Strike a diagonal line across a cell:

If you went to Home->Font-> Borders and clicked More Borders, you will have many options, such as striking a diagonal line across a cell.

Hasten navigation:

By clicking any arrow button after Ctrl, you can speed up navigation and can jump straightaway to the corner of the spreadsheet. To navigate downwards, just press the down arrow button after pressing Ctrl.

Unlike MS Word, which is text-oriented, or MS PowerPoint, which is slide-based, Microsoft Excel is a spreadsheet, which means it consists almost entirely of cells. So, for a program like this, the arrow button has to be the most useful button, since it enables easy navigation from one cell to another.

The various shortcut keys that use the arrow button have been described in previous questions.

Pressing Ctrl +Alt +? will open the way of seeing all keyboard shortcuts.

By common experience, the areas that people most commonly find difficult are VBA, Macros & Automation.

These are:

1.     XLOOKUP

2.     VLOOKUP

3.     SUM function

4.     COUNTIF function

5.     IF function

6.     IFS

7.    SUMIF

An associated data type is found in each column of a Data Model and specifies the type of data that goes into the column. Whole numbers, dates and times, monetary data, text, and decimal numbers, are some of these.

Microsoft Excel, as is known, is a feature-laden spreadsheet program. A professional who uses MS Excel is expected to have several skills. Yet, if one were to list five of the basic Excel skills, these would be:

-       Pivot Tables

-       Formulas

-       Charts and graphs

-       Knowing how to record data

-       Knowing how to organize data

MS Excel consists of 11 data formats. These are:

-       Number: Used for displaying numbers

-       Currency: For monetary formats

-       Accounting: For lining up the currency symbols and decimal points present in a column

-       Date: This MS Excel data format is created for displaying date and time serial numbers as data values

-       Time: For displaying date and time serial numbers as date values

-       Percentage: Multiplies the cell value by 100 and displays it in the form of a percentage

-       Fraction: Displays the cell values in the form of a fraction

-       Scientific: For displaying cell values scientifically

-       Text: Displays text in the cell, treating even a number in the cell as a text

-       Special: For tracking database and list values

-       Custom: Used to change the way the values in the cell show up, even while keeping the original value as it is