For the busy accounting and finance professional, working smarter not harder is often the way to success. That’s why technology and software make it simple to stay on top of financial matters. One of the most often turned to software products for the accounting pro is Microsoft Excel, which has long been regarded as a helpful way to save time and organize tasks.
However, if you’ve ever been in the middle of working on a large and complex spreadsheet in Excel, there are times when you wish you could find some shortcuts other than wearing out your poor mouse. The good news is that there are some tricks to Excel which includes some easy to use Excel keyboard short cuts. Once you learn these, you’ll be whizzing through your accounting tasks with ease!
Here’s the top 5 Excel keyboard short cuts for you to remember.
CTRL+A Selects the Entire Excel Worksheet
Once you have a worksheet and you want to either copy and paste it somewhere else, or you want to duplicate your data, you don’t have to hover over fields and drag your pointer all the way down the sheet to do this. You even don’t have to select the top left cell and do a right-click to copy all of the contents. Instead, you just hit the ‘CTRL’ key and the ‘A’ key on your computer keyboard three times and at the same time and your entire worksheet will be highlighted.
CTRL + SHIFT Enters the Current Time Stamp
Have you ever wanted to timestamp a section of your spreadsheet, but you didn’t know how? Well, now you have the right Excel keyboard short cut to do this. Simply hold down your ‘CTRL’ and your ‘SHIFT’ key together and you’ll see the current time pop into whatever cell your mouse pointer is in. This can be helpful when more than one person is sharing a group spreadsheet, or you need to time stamp a task for payroll purposes.
CTRL + SHIFT + $ Applies the Currency Symbol with 2 Decimal Places
When you are working with financials, it can become annoying trying to go into the formatting menu of Excel to change a field to the correct currency, display the dollar sign and add the standard number of decimal points. Instead of getting flustered, use this handy Excel short cut key to get your numbers lined up the way they are supposed to look in the spreadsheet. You’ll be able to add your financial data down to every penny.
CTRL + H Gives You the Find and Replace All Option
Spreadsheets in Excel can be difficult to use when you need to find and replace multiple data cells in, unless you know this little trick. By clicking on ‘CTRL’ and your ‘H’ keys, the command box that allows you to find and replace any type of data, words, or cells with new characters pops up on your screen. So if you wanted to replace all the incidents of a misspelled name, with the correct spelling throughout the entire Excel form, you can do this using this easy short cut.
CTRL + P Print Your Excel Spreadsheet
Ready to print out your completed Excel spreadsheet or report and you find yourself short on time? No problem! Just use your keyboard and hold down the ‘CTRL’ key along with your ‘P’ key and the printer dialogue box will automatically enable you to choose how you’d like to print it out. Use this whenever you need to print a spreadsheet, and you also have the option to save it in other formats, or preview it to make sure it looks right before sending it to your office printer.
For more Microsoft Excel short cuts click here!
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