It's another Excel 2007 Thursday. I'll take a look at how your old Excel 2003 shortcut keys continue to work in Excel 2007. Episode 393 shows you how.
This blog is the video podcast companion to the book, Learn Excel from MrExcel. Download a new two minute video every workday to learn one of the 277 tips from the book!
This blog is the video podcast companion to the book, Learn Excel from MrExcel. Download a new two minute video every workday to learn one of the 277 tips from the book!
Transcript of the video:
Hey, welcome back to another netcast from MrExcel, I'm Bill Jelen. Tuesdays and Thursdays we are going to take a look at Excel 2007.
Now a couple of podcasts ago, I showed you the new ribbon user interface, and a lot of you are panicking because you know the old user interface really well. Well, if you know it so well that you know the shortcut keys, there's good news for you in Excel 2007. All of the control shortcut keys continue to work, Ctrl+C for Copy, Ctrl+B for Bold, Ctrl+I for Italics, any of those Ctrl shortcut keys that you knew in Excel 2003, continue to work in Excel 2007.
Now in Excel 2007, if you knew any of the Alt shortcut keys, for example, the E N edit is underlined. So if I hit Alt E, it opens the Edit, menu and then the I in Fill is underlined, and then J in Justify is underlined, so Alt E I J will use Edit, Fill, Justify. If you memorize those commands, they continue to work in Excel 2007. I select the data and hold down Alt E, you see that we get a box up here, that says that I'm using an Office 2003 access key. As I continue to hit the letters I and J, Excel eventually will perform the command. This is a great way, if you know the old Alt shortcut keys, to allow them to work. Now they work for almost all of the menu items, they don't work for the Help menu or the File menu.
On Tuesday, I talked about the new ribbon tabs, Home, Insert, Page Layout, I didn't mention the most important tab. The File menu is behind this button up here called the Office button, what a crazy place to put the most important commands like New, Open, Save, Print, etc. This used to say File, but in one of the betas they changed it to be this strange-looking icon. The first time you open Excel 2007, the icon kind of pulses and flashes, hoping that you'll click on it. But from personal experience, I loaded this version on my wife's computer and didn't tell her what was going on, and she was never able to find the Print icon because it's not behind a word, it's hiding up there behind this Office icon.
Well hey, so good news, Excel 2007 continues to honor your old shortcut keys. If you've never memorized shortcut keys, there's an easier way to do it in Excel 2007. If you just hit the Alt key without any other keystrokes, you'll see that every ribbon tab has a keyboard accelerator, and these will not change. M is always going to be Formulas, H is always going to be Home, and N is always going to be Insert. If you hit the N key, we then now have a whole bunch of new shortcut keys for every single icon. In Excel 2003, there were some commands that you can never invoke with the keyboard.
Well now, in Excel 2007, every single item on the ribbon will have its own shortcut key.
So for example, N, coming to the Insert ribbon, and then if I hit C, I'll be able to insert a Column chart, and even within the column chart, I can then choose using the arrow keys.
So literally everything in Excel 2007, you can use the keyboard, which of course, is a much faster way to go if you're using Excel 40 hours a week.
Hey, thanks for stopping by, we'll see you tomorrow for another netcast from MrExcel!
Now a couple of podcasts ago, I showed you the new ribbon user interface, and a lot of you are panicking because you know the old user interface really well. Well, if you know it so well that you know the shortcut keys, there's good news for you in Excel 2007. All of the control shortcut keys continue to work, Ctrl+C for Copy, Ctrl+B for Bold, Ctrl+I for Italics, any of those Ctrl shortcut keys that you knew in Excel 2003, continue to work in Excel 2007.
Now in Excel 2007, if you knew any of the Alt shortcut keys, for example, the E N edit is underlined. So if I hit Alt E, it opens the Edit, menu and then the I in Fill is underlined, and then J in Justify is underlined, so Alt E I J will use Edit, Fill, Justify. If you memorize those commands, they continue to work in Excel 2007. I select the data and hold down Alt E, you see that we get a box up here, that says that I'm using an Office 2003 access key. As I continue to hit the letters I and J, Excel eventually will perform the command. This is a great way, if you know the old Alt shortcut keys, to allow them to work. Now they work for almost all of the menu items, they don't work for the Help menu or the File menu.
On Tuesday, I talked about the new ribbon tabs, Home, Insert, Page Layout, I didn't mention the most important tab. The File menu is behind this button up here called the Office button, what a crazy place to put the most important commands like New, Open, Save, Print, etc. This used to say File, but in one of the betas they changed it to be this strange-looking icon. The first time you open Excel 2007, the icon kind of pulses and flashes, hoping that you'll click on it. But from personal experience, I loaded this version on my wife's computer and didn't tell her what was going on, and she was never able to find the Print icon because it's not behind a word, it's hiding up there behind this Office icon.
Well hey, so good news, Excel 2007 continues to honor your old shortcut keys. If you've never memorized shortcut keys, there's an easier way to do it in Excel 2007. If you just hit the Alt key without any other keystrokes, you'll see that every ribbon tab has a keyboard accelerator, and these will not change. M is always going to be Formulas, H is always going to be Home, and N is always going to be Insert. If you hit the N key, we then now have a whole bunch of new shortcut keys for every single icon. In Excel 2003, there were some commands that you can never invoke with the keyboard.
Well now, in Excel 2007, every single item on the ribbon will have its own shortcut key.
So for example, N, coming to the Insert ribbon, and then if I hit C, I'll be able to insert a Column chart, and even within the column chart, I can then choose using the arrow keys.
So literally everything in Excel 2007, you can use the keyboard, which of course, is a much faster way to go if you're using Excel 40 hours a week.
Hey, thanks for stopping by, we'll see you tomorrow for another netcast from MrExcel!
