Navigation

Quick reference

• 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.