Ditch the mouse
One of the things that distinguishes a power Excel user from a novice (or even intermediate) user, is the ability to get things done without using the mouse.
There are a bunch of sites and blogs which show you all of the available keyboard shortcuts in your chosen version of Excel, but becoming a better Excel user is not simply a matter of memorising all the keyboard shortcuts — it’s as much about knowing which shortcuts are the most valuable (in terms of time-saving, efficiency, design and accuracy), and when to use them.
Once you know how certain keyboard actions behave it is easy to start to design your spreadsheets in a way that lets you take advantage of them. For example, you may know that holding down Ctrl and then hitting an arrow key on the keyboard will jump to the next “block” in the selected direction (see right). When you hold Ctrl and hit the down arrow key the selection moves to the end of the current block or the start of the next block — a block being a group of non-blank contiguous cells. Read More…
