Using Keyboard Shortcuts in Microsoft Excel

This video guide shows how pressing the ALT key lets you select any of the functions in Excel's ribbon menus through the keyboard. The video shows the first step which puts letters by each ribbon at the highest available level, such as Home or Insert. If you then press A, you will find yourself on the Data ribbon with additional letters displayed for each option on the ribbon. Pressing T will then filter your data.

A number of the most common Excel functions are available directly as keyboard shortcuts when you hold down the CTRL key. A lot of these functions are common across the whole of Windows so, CTRL + C can copy an Excel cell, the same way it can copy a file in a Windows folder. The equivalent method via ALT would be ALT + H (Home ribbon) + C (copy) so is both less efficient and less memorable. Microsoft maintain a full guide to the CTRL options here.

The ALT shortcuts are known as KeyTips and can be assigned by users. When this has been done or if you have customised your Excel ribbon without paying attention to the KeyTips feature, there may be conflicts between different ribbon options. By default Excel starts adding numbers after duplicate shortcuts to keep them unique. So if you click ALT and see options such as Y1 and Y2, that means Excel has added numbers to the end of the defined sequences. Although displayed as Y1 and Y2,you would access Y1 by pressing Y, then 1, in sequence instead of trying to press both at the same time.