What does it mean

"Keyboarding" is using typed shortcuts to access the features of Excel, rather than depending on your mouse to navigate the menu structure.

Why is it important

Keyboarding can dramatically improve the speed to get things done in Excel. Any feature within Excel can be accessed using your keyboard.

Hints and how to's

• The ALT key activates keyboard-based access of your menus. Then select the letter of the menu heading opens the menu drop down. You will see that every feature has a letter underlined that can be used to choose that feature.
• Many features can also be accessed directly with CTRL and a letter. While this approach may be faster, it doesn't give you the comprehensive access provided by the ALT-menu approach.
• The keyboard gives you a powerful way to move around your spreadsheet. Juice blog post and Excel keyboarding game
  • CTRL (SHIFT) arrows to move through (select) data ranges
  • CTRL page up/page down to move between tabs
• Don't try to memorize all the keyboard shortcuts all at once. Instead, identify one feature that you use frequently and teach yourself how to access it through the keyboard. Repeat.

Favorite keyboard shortcuts

• CTRL click to format an object
• CTRL enter to fill an entire highlighted region
• ALT up/down arrow to access drop-down lists
• F2 to toggle in and out of formula and spreadsheet
• SHIFT mouse drag, CTRL mouse drag
• CTRL page-up/page-down to navigate tabs
• F4 to switch between absolute and relative references for selected text in a formula see Basic Formula skills
• CTRL + ; to enter the current date into a cell
• CTRL + SHIFT + ; to enter the current time into a cell
• Copy / cut / paste using CTRL + C, CTRL + X, CTRL + V respectively
• ALT + ENTER in a cell forces a line break
• CTRL + Mousewheel zooms (in or out depends on turn direction)
• Right-Click on Navigation Buttons (the control buttons in the left lower corner that look like a vide recorder control) pops up a list of all worksheets, making it easy to jump to the sheet of interest
• SHIFT + F11 inserts a new worksheet
• SHIFT + Spacebar Select entire row
• CTRL + Spacebar Select entire column
• CTRL + - Delete selected row or column
• CTRL + SHIFT + = Insert selected row of column