Productivity Cheat Sheet 4: Excel - 3

Microsoft Excel was born in 1984-85—on the Apple Macintosh platform—as the world’s first graphical interface spreadsheet with pull down menus and point-and-click mouse-driven capabilities. It was also the first app boot up on Windows PCs in 1987. Today, it is almost as ubiquitous as Microsoft Windows.

To help you emulate Schumacher on the keyboard, here’s the last lap of our fast-track to Excel series.

Ctrl + F1: Closes and reopens current task pane
Alt + F1: Creates a chart of data in the current range
Alt + Shift + F1: Inserts new worksheet
Shift + F2: Edits cell comment
F3: Pastes defined name into a formula
Shift + F3: Displays Insert Function dialog box
F4: Repeats last command or action, if possible
Ctrl + F4: Closes selected workbook window
Ctrl + F5: Restores window size of selected workbook window
F6: Switches to next pane in split worksheet
Shift + F6: Switches to previous pane in split worksheet
Ctrl + F6: Switches to next workbook window when more than one workbook window are open
F7: Displays Spelling dialog box
Ctrl + F7: Performs Move command on workbook window when it is not maximised
F8: Turns extend mode on or off
Shift + F8: Enables you to add a non-adjacent cell or range to a selection of cells by using the arrow keys
Ctrl + F8: Performs Size command (on the Control menu for the workbook window) when a workbook is not maximised
Alt + F8: Displays Macro dialog box to run, edit, or delete macro
F9: Calculates all worksheets in all open workbooks
F9 followed by Enter (or followed by Ctrl + Shift + Enter for array formulas): Calculates selected portion of formula and replaces the selected portion with the calculated value
Shift + F9: Calculates the active worksheet
Ctrl + Alt + F9: Calculates all worksheets in all open workbooks, regardless of whether they have changed since the last calculation
Ctrl + Alt + Shift + F9: Rechecks dependent formulas, and then calculates all cells in all open workbooks, including cells not marked as needing to be calculated
Ctrl + F9: Minimises workbook window to an icon
F10: Selects menu bar or closes an open menu and submenu at the same time
Shift + F10: Displays shortcut menu for a selected item
Alt + Shift + F10: Displays menu or message for a smart tag. If more than one smart tag is present, it switches to next smart tag and displays its menu or message
Ctrl + F10: Maximises or restores selected workbook window
F11: Creates a chart of the data in the current range
Shift + F11: Inserts new worksheet
Alt + F11: Opens Visual Basic Editor, in which you can create a macro by using Visual Basic for Applications (VBA)
Alt + Shift + F11: Opens Microsoft Script Editor, where you can add text, edit HTML tags, and modify any script code
F12: Displays the Save As dialog box