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About this lesson

Utilize the keyboard or mouse to select cells and ranges in a spreadsheet.

Exercise files

Download this lesson’s exercise file.

Navigation.xlsx
10.2 KB

Quick reference

Topic

Navigating the Excel Interface.

When to use

Selecting cells and ranges in the Excel interface.

Instructions

Selecting cells with the mouse

  • To select a single cell, just click on it
  • To select multiple contiguous cells, left click the first cell, and drag to the last one you want to include in the range
  • To select non-contiguous cells, left click the first cell, hold down the Command key and click each other cell you’d like to select

Selecting cells with the keyboard

  • To select a single cell, use the arrow keys to navigate to it
  • To select multiple contiguous cells, select the first cell, hold down the SHIFT key and arrow to the last one you want to include in the range
  • Unfortunately, selecting non-contiguous cells cannot be done without the use of the mouse

Tab and Enter Functionality

  • Pressing Enter will move you one cell down
  • Pressing Tab will move you one cell to the right
  • Pressing Enter AFTER PRESSING TAB will move you to the cell immediately below the cell you started tabbing from

Inserting/Deleting Columns/Rows

  • Right click the Column header (column letter) or Row number and choose Delete to remove a column or row
  • Right click the Column header (column letter) or Row number and choose Insert to insert a column or row

Undo

  • In the QAT, the arrow that points to the left is the Undo arrow
  • Clicking Undo will revert the last change in the “undo stack”
  • Undo can also be triggered by pressing Command+Z
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  • 00:04 In this video we're going to look at how to navigate through the Excel user
  • 00:08 interface using both keyboard and mouse here.
  • 00:11 So the first thing that we want to know is how do we select cells.
  • 00:15 And this is actually fairly easy, what we can do is we can left
  • 00:18 click with our mouse and it will allow us to select any individual cell.
  • 00:22 We can also select bigger areas by left clicking and
  • 00:26 holding down the mouse button, just dragging to select a larger area.
  • 00:31 If we want to select a group of cells that are not what we call contiguous,
  • 00:37 so it's not in one big block.
  • 00:39 We want to select individual ones.
  • 00:41 What we can do is, is we can hold down the command key and click individual cells and
  • 00:46 you'll notice that we've got a bunch of them that are highlighted here as well.
  • 00:49 So that allows it to select a bunch of different ones.
  • 00:53 If I wanna click on the first cell and I wanna select everything up to say F13,
  • 00:57 I don't even have to actually drag.
  • 01:00 If I hold down my Shift key, I can click on F13 at this point and
  • 01:04 that will actually select all the cells in that block as well.
  • 01:07 So Shift will expand your selection and Ctrl picks up individual ones.
  • 01:12 And we can also expand our selection using the keyboard.
  • 01:15 We wanna move around and we can use our arrow keys,
  • 01:18 so drop down and back up again and left or that's right and left.
  • 01:23 If I wanna select multiple cells at this place,
  • 01:26 I can just hold down my Shift key and arrow down.
  • 01:28 It will increase the size of my selection.
  • 01:30 And across to the right.
  • 01:32 And it actually makes it bigger.
  • 01:33 Now there's unfortunately no way to select noncontiguous cells like we did
  • 01:37 holding down the command key or just using the keyboard.
  • 01:41 We have to use the mouse in order to select these noncontiguous cells here.
  • 01:46 Okay so that's just something to be a little bit aware of.
  • 01:51 Another couple of keys that work actually quite interestingly are the Tab key and
  • 01:55 the Enter key.
  • 01:56 If you press Enter or Return it will drop you down one row.
  • 02:01 I'm going to arrow back up for a second here.
  • 02:03 If I go with my Tab key it will move me across.
  • 02:06 But now watch what happens when I hit my Enter key.
  • 02:10 It actually drops me back to the cell that was immediately
  • 02:13 below the first cell that I started tabbing from.
  • 02:16 So I'm starting in F5 right now.
  • 02:18 I'll hit Tab, Tab, Tab,
  • 02:20 when I hit Enter it will take me down to F6 which is immediately below cell F5.
  • 02:25 This does not happen if you use your arrow keys.
  • 02:28 So this time I'll use my arrow keys to across one, two, three.
  • 02:31 When I hit Enter now, unlike Tab, this will just drop me down one cell.
  • 02:36 Okay, so it's always the, it takes you down to the row below where you started
  • 02:41 tabbing from, that's the big piece that you wanna be remembering right there.
  • 02:47 If you want to remove or delete a column, we can certainly do that.
  • 02:52 I'm just gonna go and put a value in.
  • 02:53 And call them F here.
  • 02:55 So type in 1 and press Enter.
  • 02:57 If I want to delete a column, I right click on it, and I can say Delete.
  • 03:02 And it will actually delete the entire column.
  • 03:04 I can do the same thing for a row.
  • 03:06 So if I wanted to say, get rid of this particular row right here, I can right
  • 03:10 click where it says 11 and I can delete it and that row will go away in its entirety.
  • 03:15 So, that's how we get them back.
  • 03:16 But, what happens when you do that and you didn't mean to?
  • 03:20 That's a good question.
  • 03:21 Now what we have, is we have the ability to undo mistakes here.
  • 03:26 And these are actually some of the keys that show up in the QAT.
  • 03:29 You'll notice this little arrow that's sort of pointing back to the left.
  • 03:33 This is the undo stack and you can see that it's actually
  • 03:36 held a whole bunch of commands that I've had in here.
  • 03:39 So, if I undo the delete, it'll bring back that first row.
  • 03:43 If I click it again, it'll bring back the column that I deleted and
  • 03:47 if I click it again it'll take the one out that I put in there as well.
  • 03:50 So the undo key lets me go backwards and
  • 03:53 the redo key here will let me replay those actions as well to make them happen.
  • 03:58 So, that's good stuff to know.
  • 04:01 The other thing is is that you can
  • 04:04 also trigger the undo action by pressing Command+Z.
  • 04:08 That will actually back up those commands as well.
  • 04:11 So that's the quick way to go through and
  • 04:13 actually undo if you just want to use the keyboard.

Lesson notes are only available for subscribers.

The Work Surface
04m:57s
First File
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