Hello. This is Gerry Chevalier from the GTT Edmonton Chapter. This weekly blog provides tips that I find useful as a keyboard user of Windows. The information is for Windows10 and Office 365, although many tips still apply to older versions. The tips do not require a screen reader unless specifically noted. Thus, the tips apply whether you are a keyboard user or low vision mouse user. Here is this week’s tip.

Microsoft Excel – Useful Shortcuts Part 2

• Press Applications key to open a context menu of things you can do to a cell or selection of cells such as sorting cells, inserting a cell or copied cells, or inserting a link.
• Press F2 to edit a cell. This is the typical way to edit a long formula. Press Enter or TAB to finish your editing. Press Escape to exit without changing the cell.
• Press Control+1 to edit the formatting of a cell or selected cells. Note this opens a multi-tab formatting dialogue where you can move from tab to tab with Control+TAB.
• Press Control+; (semicolon) to insert today’s date into the current cell.
• Press Control+F to search the worksheet or selected cells.
• Press Control+H to search and replace within the worksheet or selected cells.
• Press Alt+I, R, Enter to insert a new row.
• Press Alt+I, C, Enter to insert a new column.
• Press Alt+E, D, R, Enter to delete the current row.
• Press Alt+E, D, C, Enter to delete the current column.
• Pres Alt+H, I, S to insert a new worksheet.
• Press Alt+H, D, S to delete the current worksheet.
• To rename a worksheet, press Alt+H, O, R and then type the new name.
• Press Control+PageDown or Control+PageUp to switch to the next or previous worksheet within a workbook.
• Press Control+Shift+S to bring up a list of all worksheets from which you can arrow to select the worksheet you want to switch to.
• Press Control+F3 to open the Name Manager where you can define names for cells or ranges of cells. For JAWS and NVDA users, this is where you would define special names for row and column titles that will allow those screen readers to speak row and column titles as you arrow around in the spreadsheet.
• Press Control+S to save an existing workbook or F12 to open the Save As dialogue to save a new workbook.
• For more info here is the complete list of Excel shortcuts.
• And here is more info on basic Excel tasks using a screen reader.

That’s it for this tip. Until next Wednesday, happy computing.