Jim from California suggests that I take a look at the new Excel 2007 Alt shortcut keys. They are pretty cool, with one minor drawback. Episode 696 takes a look.
This blog is the video podcast companion to the book, Learn Excel 97-2007 from MrExcel. Download a new two minute video every workday to learn one of the 377 tips from the book!
This blog is the video podcast companion to the book, Learn Excel 97-2007 from MrExcel. Download a new two minute video every workday to learn one of the 377 tips from the book!
Transcript of the video:
Hey, welcome back to the MrExcel netcast.
I'm Bill Jelen.
Today I have an email from Jim.
Jim is from California, and Jim said you know hey, I always see you using all these old shortcut keys the ones from Excel 2003, he says for here in Excel 2007 there's a whole bunch of new shortcut keys, and that's true.
Well, first of all, all of the old control keys continue to work in excel 2007 and the old Alt shortcut keys if you do them in the proper sequence, will continue to work.
But if you just want to learn the new shortcut keys, it's pretty cool all you do is hit the Alt button.
When you hit Alt you'll see that each tab of the new Excel 2007 ribbon has a letter.
So, if I wanna switch over to the data tab, I would press the A button.
And now every single command on the ribbon has a new letter.
So, for example, If I wanted to do Data, Text to Columns in Excel 2007, it will be Alt and then A and then E .
and the great thing is these letters stay predictable.
They work perfectly you can start to memorize the new keyboard shortcuts.
If you've never memorized the old one, and you're working in excel 2007. It's very cool.
Now, I gotta tell you though I have one complaint with this system, when we press Alt you'll notice that they take the items in the quick access toolbar and number them 1 through 4.
Let me quickly add some more items to the quick access toolbar.
Will customize, I'm just goonna randomly add enough.
So, that way I have more than 10, click OK.
And now, when I press the Alt key, you'll see that these are numbered from 1 through 9 and then backwards 09 through 01.
I don't wanna memorize these because everyone's quick access toolbar is going to be completely different even mine's gonna be different.
I find as I need things I'll add it to the quick access toolbar and then any shortcut keys that I memorize are going to be lost because if I add a new icon here, between 3 and 4 all of the other keys are going to be shifted over one to the right.
So, I don't see anyone who's going to start to use the shortcut keys up in the quick access toolbar unless you have the discipline to never change your quick access toolbar, even then when you go to someone else's computer.
It's likely they're going to have a different quick access toolbar and the shortcut key won't work as well.
I do applaud Microsoft though for most of the shortcut keys it's now possibly get to every single command on the ribbon using the shortcut key and there were some commands in Excel 2003 that simply didn't have shortcut keys.
So, this really is a much improved system.
I wanna thank Jim for sending the note in with that suggestion and I want to thank you for stopping by.
We'll see you next time for another netcast from MrExcel.
I'm Bill Jelen.
Today I have an email from Jim.
Jim is from California, and Jim said you know hey, I always see you using all these old shortcut keys the ones from Excel 2003, he says for here in Excel 2007 there's a whole bunch of new shortcut keys, and that's true.
Well, first of all, all of the old control keys continue to work in excel 2007 and the old Alt shortcut keys if you do them in the proper sequence, will continue to work.
But if you just want to learn the new shortcut keys, it's pretty cool all you do is hit the Alt button.
When you hit Alt you'll see that each tab of the new Excel 2007 ribbon has a letter.
So, if I wanna switch over to the data tab, I would press the A button.
And now every single command on the ribbon has a new letter.
So, for example, If I wanted to do Data, Text to Columns in Excel 2007, it will be Alt and then A and then E .
and the great thing is these letters stay predictable.
They work perfectly you can start to memorize the new keyboard shortcuts.
If you've never memorized the old one, and you're working in excel 2007. It's very cool.
Now, I gotta tell you though I have one complaint with this system, when we press Alt you'll notice that they take the items in the quick access toolbar and number them 1 through 4.
Let me quickly add some more items to the quick access toolbar.
Will customize, I'm just goonna randomly add enough.
So, that way I have more than 10, click OK.
And now, when I press the Alt key, you'll see that these are numbered from 1 through 9 and then backwards 09 through 01.
I don't wanna memorize these because everyone's quick access toolbar is going to be completely different even mine's gonna be different.
I find as I need things I'll add it to the quick access toolbar and then any shortcut keys that I memorize are going to be lost because if I add a new icon here, between 3 and 4 all of the other keys are going to be shifted over one to the right.
So, I don't see anyone who's going to start to use the shortcut keys up in the quick access toolbar unless you have the discipline to never change your quick access toolbar, even then when you go to someone else's computer.
It's likely they're going to have a different quick access toolbar and the shortcut key won't work as well.
I do applaud Microsoft though for most of the shortcut keys it's now possibly get to every single command on the ribbon using the shortcut key and there were some commands in Excel 2003 that simply didn't have shortcut keys.
So, this really is a much improved system.
I wanna thank Jim for sending the note in with that suggestion and I want to thank you for stopping by.
We'll see you next time for another netcast from MrExcel.
