If you are using Excel, the word of the game has to be efficient. Most people familiarize themselves with the basic ideas, but keyboard shortcuts are a different story; they take your productivity to an entirely new level altogether. Think about it for yourself-you’d cut hours of work by just typing just a few keystrokes. Sounds fantastic, doesn’t it? That’s the power of time-saving Excel shortcuts.
Whether it’s data analysis, writing reports, or computing complex formulas, these shortcuts will save you a ton of time and reduce errors in your work. To take your skills to the next level, you can learn how to perform automated tasks with an Excel VBA course.
Why Do You Need Time-Saving Excel Shortcuts?
Do you know that the Excel users utilizing the shortcuts complete work, on average, 50% sooner than those who don’t? Scientific studies evidence the fact that people using shortcuts for their profession save up to 8 working days yearly. For example, when using the mouse to perform some copy or paste actions, these operations will take several seconds every time. Utilizing shortcuts for such actions takes less than one second. It adds up over time. If you do intensive data analysis or work extensively in Excel, then the cumulative time saved is just huge.
Here are some must-know time-saving Excel shortcuts to help your workflow:
- Ctrl + Z – Undo the last action. We all make mistakes, and this is the fastest way to correct them.
- Ctrl + Y – Redo an action. You accidentally undid something? No problem at all—you can redo it in a second.
- Ctrl + F – Quickly find a specific word or number in your worksheet so you will not take hours of having to do an old-fashioned manual search.
- Ctrl + H – Replace text or data quickly. This will surely save so much time if you have to replace some points of data in a big dataset.
These handy Excel shortcut keys are just a good beginning. Adding them to your routine will eliminate the need to constantly navigate with the mouse and thus streamline your work and make you a more efficient user of Excel.
Super-useful Excel Advanced Shortcuts for Power Users
If you have mastered the basic stuff, then it is time to move on to shortcuts at high levels for managing large datasets, handling formula manipulation, and just being a great master of the game called Excel. Well, calculating numbers is only half the task. What matters with Excel is that you get meaning and insight from data in the most efficient way possible, and these shortcuts will take you there much quicker.
- Alt + = – Sum a column or row of numbers automatically. No need to select or type out the formula. Excel will do it for you.
- Ctrl +; – Inserts today’s date into a selected cell. Great for project tracking and timelines.
- Ctrl + Shift + $ – Formats the chosen cells as a currency. Anyone with financial information can use the shortcut to make your worksheets readable within a second.
- Ctrl + Shift + % – Formats the chosen data to a percentage for statistical analysis or budgeting.
They are priceless for an analyst, an accountant, or any user working with huge volumes. Imagine you had to add up values in a column of 1000 rows; the conventional method might take you minutes to do, whereas Alt + = gets this done in a jiffy.
How Do You Save Time with Keyboard Shortcuts?
You might be asking yourself: How Do You Save Time with Keyboard Shortcuts? To navigate through the ribbon manually, find “Home”, click “Number”, and then apply currency formatting, that is a staggering 6-7 clicks. When you do it with Ctrl + Shift + $ you get it done in one keystroke. Multiply that by hundreds of cells, and you save quite a lot of time.”.
Professionals spend up to 50% of their time scrolling between tabs and redoing the same tasks that should be accomplished within a few key presses.
Numerous firms promote learning several useful keyboard shortcuts for Excel because it enhances productivity as well as reduces errors. Using shortcuts automatically minimizes human error, and via Excel, the correct formats, formulas, or other adjustments are automatically applied, which makes one reliable to have confidence in the output.
Take Your Skills to the Next Level with an Excel VBA Course
If you are seriously interested in maximizing your effectiveness in Excel, then consider taking an Excel VBA course. Sure, shortcuts are great for doing some things by hand, but VBA enables you to automate repetitive operations and hence save even more time. If you have repeatedly had to produce the same type of reports over and over again, you can use VBA to enable automation from importing data through formatting and analysis. Cut something that takes you an hour to do in a few minutes.
Some interesting facts about Excel VBA automation:
According to Data Journalism Lab, companies adopting Automate Excel Reports saved more than 30% of the total time consumed in data entry and reporting.
VBA macros can perform complex data analysis within a few seconds and even provide almost no user interaction once set.
An Excel VBA course will teach you to write macros that automate monotonous tasks and create custom functions that get the work done. Then, combine this knowledge with time-saving Excel shortcuts, and you’ll be an Excel wizard in no time.
Supercharge Your Productivity with These Excel Shortcut Keys
Now you should have a good sense of how powerful and useful keyboard shortcuts for Excel can be in terms of saving time and improving productivity. From the simplest action-such as copying and pasting-to more complex, involved actions with formatting cells and calculations, shortcuts in Excel are an essential fundamental tool for getting work done smarter, not harder.
Combine these keyboard shortcuts with the automation tools you will learn in an Excel VBA course by Gineesoft Solutions, and you’ll be well on your way to becoming a master of Excel. End repetitive work tasks for good – keyboard shortcuts and VBA will have you breezing through your workload at record speed in no time.
