Excel shortcut keys will indeed help you build your reports and analysis faster and better. After reading this article, you would have understood the different types of Excel shortcuts related to the workbook, cell formatting, row and column formatting, and pivot tables.

1. 50 Excel Shortcuts That You Should Know in
2022
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Microsoft Excel is extensively used across the globe to store and analyze data. Despite various
new data analytics tools in the market, Excel remains the go-to product for working with data. It
has numerous in-built features, which makes it easier for you to organize your data.
The shortcut keys in Excel help you work on your data in a jiffy. In this article, we’ll be
discussing the various Excel shortcuts. These keyboard shortcuts are used to perform tasks faster
and effectively.
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2. What is Microsoft Excel?
Although many of you are already aware of Excel, let’s have a small introduction anyways.
Microsoft Excel is an application developed by Microsoft that is used to record, analyze,
and visualize data. Excel, a spreadsheet application, was developed by Microsoft in 1985.
Fig: Microsoft Excel Spreadsheet
Data in Excel is in the form of rows and columns. Excel is commonly used to record and analyze
data, perform mathematical operations, and visualize structured data in charts and graphs.
Finally, another important application of Excel is that it helps in automating tasks through excel
macros.
To perform the tasks mentioned above quickly, Excel has a set of shortcuts. Various operations
can be achieved with a few simple keyboard strokes. Let’s dive deep into the Excel shortcuts that
can help us work better on an Excel spreadsheet.

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Need for Excel Shortcuts
Excel supports a plethora of keyboard shortcuts that help you work efficiently and increase
productivity. Instead of accessing the toolbar with a mouse, two or three keystrokes are used to
perform significant functions. Isn’t that easier and time-saving? Using Excel shortcuts drastically
increases the speed, and thus reduces work-time.
Now the question is, if you have to memorize these shortcuts, the answer is no. However, it
would be an advantage if you can remember a few of them. With regular practice, you will be
able to remember most of the common Excel shortcuts.
Let’s now look at the top 50 Excel shortcuts, which you should know when working on
Microsoft Excel. In this article, we have categorized 50 Excel shortcuts based on their
operations. First, we will look at the workbook shortcut keys.
Workbook Shortcut Keys
In this section, we will understand the basics of operating a workbook. We will learn how to
create a new workbook, open an existing workbook, and save a spreadsheet so that you don’t
lose any data or calculations that you have done. We will then go through how you can toggle
between several different sheets in a workbook.
Description Excel Shortcuts

4. 1. To create a new workbook Ctrl + N
2. To open an existing workbook Ctrl + O
3. To save a workbook/spreadsheet Ctrl + S
4. To close the current workbook Ctrl + W
5. To close Excel Ctrl + F4
6. To move to the next sheet Ctrl + PageDown
7. To move to the previous sheet Ctrl + PageUp
8. To go to the Data tab Alt + A
9. To go to the View tab Alt + W
10. To go the Formula tab Alt + M

5. Those were the Excel shortcuts that can help you navigate through your spreadsheet. Once the
workbook creation is done, the next key step is cell formatting.
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Cell Formatting Shortcut Keys
A cell in Excel holds all the data that you are working on. Several different shortcuts can be
applied to a cell, such as editing a cell, aligning cell contents, adding a border to a cell, adding an
outline to all the selected cells, and many more. Here is a sneak peek into these Excel shortcuts.
Description Excel Shortcuts
11. To edit a cell F2
12. To copy and paste cells Ctrl + C, Ctrl + V
13. To italicize and make the font bold Ctrl + I, Ctrl + B
14. To center align cell contents Alt + H + A + C
15. To fill color Alt + H + H

6. 16. To add a border Alt + H + B
17. To remove outline border Ctrl + Shift + _
18. To add an outline to the select cells Ctrl + Shift + &
19. To move to the next cell Tab
20. To move to the previous cell Shift + Tab
21. To select all the cells on the right Ctrl + Shift + Right arrow
22. To select all the cells on the left Ctrl + Shift + Left Arrow
23. To select the column from the selected cell to the end of the table Ctrl + Shift + Down Arrow
24. To select all the cells above the selected cell Ctrl + Shift + Up Arrow
25. To select all the cells below the selected cell Ctrl + Shift + Down Arrow

7. In addition to the above-mentioned cell formatting shortcuts, let’s look at a few more additional
and advanced cell formatting Excel shortcuts, that might come handy.
We will learn how to add a comment to a cell. Comments are helpful when giving extra
information about cell content. We will also learn how to find value and replace it with another
value in the spreadsheet. After this, we will look into how to insert the current time, current date,
activate a filter, and add a hyperlink to a cell. Finally, we will see how to apply a format to the
data in a cell.
Description Excel Shortcuts
26. To add a comment to a cell Shift + F2
27. To delete a cell comment Shift + F10 + D
28. To display find and replace Ctrl + H
29. To activate the filter
Ctrl + Shift + L
Alt + Down Arrow
30. To insert the current date Ctrl + ;

8. 31. To insert current time Ctrl + Shift + :
32. To insert a hyperlink Ctrl + k
33. To apply the currency format Ctrl + Shift + $
34. To apply the percent format Ctrl + Shift + %
35. To go to the “Tell me what you want to do” box Alt + Q
After working with cell formatting Excel shortcuts, the next step is to understand how to work
with an entire row/column in Excel.
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Row and Column Formatting Shortcut Keys
In this section, we’ll look at some critical row and column formatting shortcuts.

9. We will understand how to delete rows and columns, hide and unhide the selected rows and
columns, and group and ungroup rows and columns.
Description Excel Shortcuts
36. To select the entire row Shift + Space
37. To select the entire column Ctrl + Space
38. To delete a column Alt+H+D+C
39. To delete a row Shift + Space, Ctrl + -
40. To hide selected row Ctrl + 9
41. To unhide selected row Ctrl + Shift + 9
42. To hide a selected column Ctrl + 0
43. To unhide a selected column Ctrl + Shift + 0

10. 44. To group rows or columns Alt + Shift + Right arrow
45. To ungroup rows or columns Alt + Shift + Left arrow
Now that we have looked at the different shortcut keys for formatting cells, rows, and columns, it
is time to jump into understanding an advanced topic in Excel, i.e. dealing with pivot
tables. Let’s look at the different shortcuts to summarize your data using a pivot table.
Pivot Table Shortcut Keys
First, let’s create a pivot table using a sales dataset.
In the image below you can see that we have a pivot table to summarize the total sales for each
subcategory of the product under each category.
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11. Fig: Pivot table using sales data
46. To group pivot table items Alt + Shift + Right arrow
The image below depicts that we have grouped the sales of bookcases and chairs subcategories
into Group 1.

12. 47. To ungroup pivot table items Alt + Shift + Left arrow
48. To hide pivot table items Ctrl + -
You can see below we have hidden the Chairs, Art, and Label subcategories.
49. To create a pivot chart on the same sheet Alt + F1
50. To create a pivot chart on a new worksheet F11

13. Fig: Pivot chart on the same sheet
Have a look at the video below that explains worksheet related shortcuts, row and column
shortcuts, and pivot table shortcut keys.
Conclusion
Excel shortcut keys will indeed help you build your reports and analysis faster and better. After
reading this article, you would have understood the different types of Excel shortcuts related to
the workbook, cell formatting, row and column formatting, and pivot tables.
https://oke.io/aqkAqBw