Excel shortcuts - Ctrl+5 for Strikethrough

Learn Excel From MrExcel, Podcast 2118: Control+5 For Strikethrough.

I keep so many to-do lists in Excel, it is crazy. So, I love to cross things off and the way to cross things off is to press CONTROL+5. CONTROL+5 is strikethrough, and if you realize, oh wait, no, I haven't picked up Mary Ellen at the airport yet and you need to undo it, you just -- it's a toggle -- press CONTROL+5 again. So, CONTROL+5 will toggle the strikethrough setting.

Now, I always wonder, why does CONTROL+5 mean strikethrough? My friend Crystal Long, who is an Access MVP, her theory is this. She's like, well, of course they wanted to use CONTROL+S for strikethrough but CONTROL+S is already SAVE, and, in Crystal's mind, a 5 and a capital letter S look vaguely similar, like this -- these 5s and Ss --  and so, as a backup, they use CONTROL+5, but another good theory, I was doing a webcast on keyboard shortcuts and someone said, well, no, we think it's because if you were manually making tally marks, you'd make 4 vertical lines and then the 5th line is striking through the other 4 and so of course the 5th thing is the one that strikes through, and so it makes sense with CONTROL+5.

I'm not sure I believe either of those but they're both great theories. So there you go, CONTROL+5 for strikethrough.

Thanks for stopping by. We'll see you next time for another netcast from MrExcel.