The 18 Best Excel Shortcuts for Mac Users.
Keyboard shortcuts in Excel are designed to make your life easier. They reduce the time it takes to complete certain tasks, actions, and commands. If you have a Mac and use Microsoft Excel in your daily life, the shortcuts in this post can improve your productivity.
The 18 Best Excel Shortcuts for Mac Users
We highlight some of the best Excel keyboard shortcuts on your Mac for formatting data, editing data entry, navigating sheets, managing files, and more. You’ll also find popular keyboard shortcuts frequently used by many Excel users.
As icing on the cake, we’ve also included steps to create your own custom keyboard shortcuts in Excel.
Navigation Shortcuts
Moving around a worksheet or workbook in Excel can sometimes be difficult, especially if you’re working with a huge dataset. These shortcuts can make navigation easier and faster.
1. Go to the top of the sheet
Have you reached the end of your Excel worksheet but want to quickly jump to the starting point? Pressing Control + Fn + Left Arrow key will jump to the first row/column on the worksheet.
2. Go to the beginning of the row
This is similar to the shortcut above, but takes you back to the first cell in the row. Let’s say you’ve scrolled all the way to the 400th cell in a row, press Fn + Left arrow key to return to the first cell in that row.
3. Go to the beginning of the column/row
Press Command (Cmd) + up arrow key to jump to the first cell in a column of continuous data in Excel.
4. Switch worksheets
Excel has shortcuts for easy navigation across multiple sheets in a workbook. Press Option+Right arrow key to move to the next worksheet (on the right) in the Excel workbook. To move to the previous worksheet (to the left), press Option + Left Arrow.
Formatting and Editing Data
These keyboard shortcuts will help you enter data faster and organize your data in your Excel worksheet.
5. Increase the font size
Do you squint your eyes to understand text and numbers on an Excel sheet? Be sure to increase the font size in all rows and columns.
Select the entire worksheet (Command + A) and press Shift + Command + > (right angle bracket key) to increase the worksheet font size.
You can also increase the font size of a specific cell, row, or column. Just select a cell, row or column and press Shift + Command + >.
6. Decrease the font size
It’s as easy as increasing the font size. Select the cells, row or column you want to decrease the font size of and press Shift + Command + < (left angle bracket key).
7. Make the text bold, italic and underline.
These are commonly used text formatting attributes in Excel and other Microsoft tools.
Select the cells you want to change and press Command + B to apply bold formatting. Command + I and Command + U will apply italic and underline formatting to the selected column, rows or cells.
You can also use these keyboard shortcuts to undo or remove the corresponding formatting applied to a cell.
8. Open the Format Cells dialog
The Format Cells dialog gives you access to extensive options for number formatting, alignment, fonts, and more. Let’s say you want to change Excel’s date or currency format, you do so in the Format Cells dialog.
Press Command + 1 to open the dialog.
9. Hide or show column
Select any cell in the column you want to hide and press Command + ) (right bracket key).
This will hide all cells in the column. Make sure you write down the letter assigned to the column you want to hide. This will help you easily determine the position of the column when you want to display it.
You can hide multiple columns at the same time. Just select a cell in each column and use the shortcut above to hide them.
To show or show a column, select any cell to the left and right of the hidden column(s) and press Shift + Command + ).
10. Hide or show row
Select any cell(s) in the row you want to hide and press Command + ( (left bracket key).
You can also hide multiple rows on a sheet at the same time.
To return a row to the sheet, select the cells to the right and left of the hidden row and press Shift + Command + (.
11. Edit Cell
Do you still double-click cells in Excel to edit their contents? Pressing F2 or using the Control+U hotkey are faster alternatives. These keyboard shortcuts activate “edit mode” and put the insertion point/cursor at the end of the line so you can start editing right away.
12. Insert a hyperlink
Press Command + K to paste the text link. Control + K is an alternative keyboard shortcut that performs the same function.
13. Start a new line
Pressing Return/Enter while entering a cell will end the entry of the cell. To start a new line when entering data into a cell, hold down the Option key and press Return.
You can also use Control + Option + Return to achieve the same result.
Frequently Used Excel Shortcuts
Some of the hotkeys in this section are system-wide keyboard shortcuts that work across all applications on your Mac. You probably already use them every day and they will surely help you complete tasks faster. This explains why they are included in this list as some of the best Excel keyboard shortcuts.
14. Revert Changes
Have you entered incorrect or invalid data in your worksheet? Or do you just want to undo a recently performed action? Press Command + Z or Ctrl + Z on your Mac keyboard to undo the most recent action applied to the worksheet.
15. Redo Changes
To redo the last action or formula you undid in Excel, press Command + Y or Ctrl + Y. This will “redo” the recently undone action.
Think of Control + Z as removing garbage (from your sheet) and Control + Y as bringing it back.
16. Inserting Special Elements
The “Paste Special” feature is useful in situations where the standard canopy paste feature is not suitable.
If you often paste special items into your book, use the keyboard shortcut Control + Command + V to quickly access the Paste Special dialog box. Or press Control + Option + V or Command + Option + V.
17. Select entire column or entire row
Use Control + Spacebar to select all cells in a column, or Shift + Spacebar to select all cells in a row on your worksheet.
18. Create a New Book
Want to create a new workbook when you open Excel or while working on another workbook? Press Command + N or Control + N on your keyboard to do so.
This will immediately open a new Excel window with a blank sheet. This is much faster than choosing Excel > File > New from the Mac menu bar.
Create Custom Keyboard Shortcuts in Excel
Microsoft allows users to create their own keyboard shortcuts based on their usage requirements. So, if you can’t find a shortcut that suits your needs, follow these steps to create one.
Open Excel, select “Tools” from the menu bar and choose “Customize Keyboard”.
Scroll through the “Categories” list and select the tab with the team you want to assign a shortcut to. Then select a command from the Commands list to continue.
Let’s say you want to assign a new label to an AutoSum formula, select the Formulas tab in the Categories section, and select AutoSum from the Commands list. If the command already has a shortcut, you will see the hotkeys in the Current Keys field. Otherwise, the field will be empty.
Open the Press New Keyboard Shortcut dialog and hold down the keys you want to assign to the selected command.
The shortcut must contain at least one modifier key (Command, Shift, Option, or Control) and any other key (letters, function keys, numbers, direction/arrow keys, etc.).
Check the “Currently Assigned” result below the dialog and make sure it reads “Not Assigned”. If a keyboard shortcut is already assigned to a command, the customization tools show which action is currently using the hotkey.
Select Add and select OK to assign the action to the keyboard shortcut.
Use Keyboard Shortcuts Excel-lently
You cannot remember these shortcuts on the go. These keyboard shortcuts can take days or weeks to get used to, depending on how often you use them. We recommend bookmarking this article in your browser so you can always return to these shortcuts.
However, there are hundreds of keyboard shortcuts in Excel. If you don’t find these hotkeys useful, you should download the Excel Shortcuts Cheat Sheet from the Microsoft website. This is a PDF document containing all Excel keyboard shortcuts for Mac and Windows computers. View the document in Print Preview or any PDF viewer and search to find the hot key to perform an action or formula in Excel.
The 18 Best Excel Shortcuts for Mac Users
The 18 Best Excel Shortcuts for Mac Users