But Excel supplies us with a range of keyboard navigational maneuvers that also allow us to home in on the cell we want; and again, some of these are rather self-evident. First, pressing the Enter key bumps the cell pointer down one row—though keep in mind it is possible to change the direction an Enter press
takes. By clicking the File Advanced After Pressing Enter command, you can actually redirect the Enter press to head left, right, or even up, instead of down. And if you uncheck the After Pressing Enter box, pressing Enter won’t move the cell pointer at all, leaving it in the cell in which you just typed. Press any of the four arrow keys and you move in the appropriate directions (and thus the Down arrow and Enter keys are equivalent here). Press Tab and you head one column to the right. Enter the Shift-Tab combination and you set out in the opposite direction—one column left; and so these Tab variations thus emulate the Right and Left arrow keys, and Shift-Enter lifts you one row up.
To encompass broader stretches of the worksheet in one fell swoop, press the Page Up or Page Down keys. These zoom you up, or down, one screen’s worth of rows; just remember that, because you can modulate the heights of rows (something we haven’t learned yet) the number of rows you’ll actually span in that screen’s worth with will vary. A far more obscure set of keystroke pairings—Alt-Page Down and Alt-Page Up—take you one screen’s worth of columns right or left, respectively, though because you can also widen or narrow columns the number of columns across which you’ll travel will vary, too.
Note in addition that if you hold down any of the above navigational keys instead of merely pressing them, the cell pointer will careen rapidly in the direction you’ve chosen. Thus hold down Page Down, for example, and you’ll streak down the worksheet at breakneck velocity.
Now here are two more slightly different but surprisingly useful keyboard navigators. Press Ctrl-Home and Excel will always deliver you back to cell A1, irrespective of your current location. What’s valuable about Ctrl-Home? Well, if you find yourself the spreadsheet equivalent of a million miles (or cells) away from home, Ctrl-Home immediately rushes you back to the worksheet’s point of inception—
that is, cell A1.
And for a kind of flip side to Ctrl-Home, there’s Ctrl-End, a slightly trickier move. Tapping Ctrl-End ferries you to the last cell in the worksheet containing data, that is, the lower-rightmost cell in which any kind of data at all is currently stored. Thus, if you’ve typed 476 in cell XY567912 and nothing else beyond that spot, Ctrl-End will take you exactly there. There’s only one problem with Ctrl-End: if you delete the 476 from cell XY567912 and then press Ctrl-End, you’ll still be sent back to that cell - even though it’s currently empty. In order to let Excel know where to find the last data-bearing cell on the worksheet now—wherever it may happen to be—you need to save the worksheet first. Then press Ctrl-End, and you’ll find yourself face-to-screen with the “new” last cell in the worksheet.
And the name box we introduced at the chapter’s outset also plays a navigational role. Click the box and then type any cell reference, e.g., D435 (by the way—cell references aren’t case sensitive; you could type d435, as well), as in Figure 2–7:
Figure 2–7. Using the Name Box to navigate to a cell address
Then press the Enter key, and Voila! Excel surges directly into D435. This method, then, provides a high-speed route to precisely the cell you want, no matter how far away; and unlike scrolling, it places you right smack-dab into the cell.
And for a similar but not identical means for pinpointing a particular cell, press the F5 key and this Go To dialog box appears, as shown in Figure 2–8:
Figure 2–8. The Go To dialog box
Type a cell in the Reference field, press Enter, and again the cell pointer rockets to just that address.
And if you think Go To is a virtual clone of Name Box with nothing new to offer, that isn’t quite true. If you use Go To repeatedly in the course of your current spreadsheet session, it compiles a list of all the destinations you’ve previously visited with that command, as shown in Figure 2–9:
Figure 2–9. Getting to a cell via Go To
Click any of the addresses recorded and click OK, and you’ll be returned to that address (those dollar signs will be explained in a later chapter). (Go To also does a number of other more exotic things, too, such as flagging all the worksheet’s cells with formulas in them, if you need to know that sort of thing.)
Here’s a table summary of these options we’ve described (the list is not exhaustive, by the way, but will surely do for now):
Table 2–1. Cell Navigation Techniques
Technique Type of Movement
Mouse Enables user to click any cell
Scroll buttons/bars Moves to a new area of the worksheet; but does not directly select any cell
Enter key Moves one cell down
Shift-Enter Moves one cell up
Tab Moves one cell to the right
Shift-Tab Moves one cell to the left
Arrow keys Moves one cell in desired direction
Page-Down/Up Moves one screen’s worth of rows up or down
Alt-Page Down/Up Moves one screen’s worth of columns right or left
Ctrl-Home Always moves to cell A1
Ctrl-End Travels to last cell containing data (the
lowest-right such cell on the worksheet)
Name Box Moves to cell whose address you’ve typed in box
Go To Moves to cell whose address you’ve typed in
Reference field