Center Across Selection is superior to Merge and Center in every way, but is there a keyboard shortcut to apply Center Across Selection? In this episode of the podcast, we visit the Cell Styles dropdown in Excel to see if it can shorten the keystrokes needed to apply Center Across Selection.
Transcript of the video:
MrExcel podcast is sponsored by "Easy-XL"!
Learn Excel from MrExcel podcast, episode 1763 - Keyboard Shortcut for Center Across Selection!
Hey, welcome back to the MrExcel netcast, I'm Bill Jelen. Today's question came in from Twitter gdh316: how do you create a shortcut for Center Across Selection? Because if you did it macro, it would clear the undo stack, that would be bad. Now first, let's Review alright, Merge Cells are completely evil, so if you use anything in this drop-down, any of these 4, well Unmerge Cells not, any of these 3, it is just bad bad bad bad bad, you never ever want to use any of those. And the reason why, we're selecting cells, we're selecting cells, we're selecting sales, BAM, we just selected 4 columns. There are just all kinds of reasons why you don't want to use Merge Cells. But instead, the good thing to do, is to use Center Across Selection.
Now you won't find that anywhere here on the Alignment tab, you have to go to either CTRL+1, or the Dialogue Launcher here. Horizontal, Center Ccross Selection like that, click OK.
Alright. And now you get the exact same look that you get with the Merge Cells, but you don't get the evilness. Yeah, I can run right through that without selecting the whole column, whereas up here, as soon as I touched that Merge Cell, it selects all 4 columns, and it just drives you crazy, plus it's hard to copy and paste, all kinds of reasons. But, what if we wanted to do a keyboard shortcut for Center Across Selection? Well hey, that is not going to work. So Alt+H, I mean there's nothing here, maybe F A, and then, you know now, boy it's going to just be horrible, TAB, down down down down down down, right, I mean that's a ridiculous amount of keystrokes.
So my idea here, is to take the cell that has Center Across Selection go to Cell Styles, New Cell Style, and we'll call it Center Across.
And we're not going to apply a lot to the cell style, we're not going to apply the number format, we ARE going to apply the alignment, but not the font, not the border, not to fill, not the protection, click OK. Alright, and now what we should be able to do, is if we want to apply it Center Across there, then it is Alt+H, and then J to open the Cell Styles, drop-down, up arrow once, and then Enter, and you've applied it! So let's try it again, let's see if we could ever get, I don't know, if we ever be able to get good at this. It is Alt+H, J Up arrow Enter. Boy that's just, oh wow, tough to say. You know, the thing that gives me hope, is that Wrap Text in Excel 2007 was promoted from the dialog box, it used to be that there was no icon for Wrap Text. In Excel 2007 they realized a lot of people were using it, so they added it to the Home tab. The ribbon, maybe someday, as Merge & Center will be expanded to include Center Across Selection. And really, I hope they make it be the first few, because as I said, Center Across Selection has all the goodness of Merge without all of the bad.
Alright hey, I want to thank you for stopping by, we'll see you next time for another netcast from MrExcel!
Learn Excel from MrExcel podcast, episode 1763 - Keyboard Shortcut for Center Across Selection!
Hey, welcome back to the MrExcel netcast, I'm Bill Jelen. Today's question came in from Twitter gdh316: how do you create a shortcut for Center Across Selection? Because if you did it macro, it would clear the undo stack, that would be bad. Now first, let's Review alright, Merge Cells are completely evil, so if you use anything in this drop-down, any of these 4, well Unmerge Cells not, any of these 3, it is just bad bad bad bad bad, you never ever want to use any of those. And the reason why, we're selecting cells, we're selecting cells, we're selecting sales, BAM, we just selected 4 columns. There are just all kinds of reasons why you don't want to use Merge Cells. But instead, the good thing to do, is to use Center Across Selection.
Now you won't find that anywhere here on the Alignment tab, you have to go to either CTRL+1, or the Dialogue Launcher here. Horizontal, Center Ccross Selection like that, click OK.
Alright. And now you get the exact same look that you get with the Merge Cells, but you don't get the evilness. Yeah, I can run right through that without selecting the whole column, whereas up here, as soon as I touched that Merge Cell, it selects all 4 columns, and it just drives you crazy, plus it's hard to copy and paste, all kinds of reasons. But, what if we wanted to do a keyboard shortcut for Center Across Selection? Well hey, that is not going to work. So Alt+H, I mean there's nothing here, maybe F A, and then, you know now, boy it's going to just be horrible, TAB, down down down down down down, right, I mean that's a ridiculous amount of keystrokes.
So my idea here, is to take the cell that has Center Across Selection go to Cell Styles, New Cell Style, and we'll call it Center Across.
And we're not going to apply a lot to the cell style, we're not going to apply the number format, we ARE going to apply the alignment, but not the font, not the border, not to fill, not the protection, click OK. Alright, and now what we should be able to do, is if we want to apply it Center Across there, then it is Alt+H, and then J to open the Cell Styles, drop-down, up arrow once, and then Enter, and you've applied it! So let's try it again, let's see if we could ever get, I don't know, if we ever be able to get good at this. It is Alt+H, J Up arrow Enter. Boy that's just, oh wow, tough to say. You know, the thing that gives me hope, is that Wrap Text in Excel 2007 was promoted from the dialog box, it used to be that there was no icon for Wrap Text. In Excel 2007 they realized a lot of people were using it, so they added it to the Home tab. The ribbon, maybe someday, as Merge & Center will be expanded to include Center Across Selection. And really, I hope they make it be the first few, because as I said, Center Across Selection has all the goodness of Merge without all of the bad.
Alright hey, I want to thank you for stopping by, we'll see you next time for another netcast from MrExcel!
