Alt Hotkeys in Excel: Keyboard Shortcuts

Hotkeys. You're able to use Excel on a Mac and on a PC. But if you're working on a PC, you have a unique advantage.

There is this special feature that allows you to access any commands on the ribbon by just using one keyboard shortcut. That keyboard key is ALT. A lot of times, people press ALT by accident.

They see these letters on the ribbon tabs, and they think it's just there and is something that they need to get rid of, but they don't understand what it is, and they think it's getting in the way. So they'll just press Escape, not realizing what this option affords you. If I press ALT, what the letters are telling me is that if I wanted to select any ribbon tab, all I would have to do is type the letter in front of it.

These are essentially keyboard shortcuts. Now, when you learn about this, this will change the way you interact with the Excel application, because now almost any command on the ribbon is available to you just by using keyboard shortcuts. For instance, let me show you an example.

I'm going to head over to this cell that contains the text ALT, H, H. If I wanted to make that text bold, all I would have to do is press ALT, H. When I press H, I go into the Home tab. Now, let me go back. Maybe I went through that a little quickly.

I'll press Escape. When you see the letter H, pressing H is like clicking on the Home tab. And then inside of the Home tab, you can see all the letters or numbers related to the commands that are on the ribbon for the Home tab.

If I want to make this text bold, I don't have to memorize keyboard shortcuts, because all I have to do is look at the ribbon and see that I need to press the number 1 to make the current text bold. I'll press 1, and I've made it bold. If I want to unbold it, I'll press ALT, H, 1. You may not think it's possible to change the background color of a cell simply using keyboard shortcuts, but I could do that as well.

ALT, H. I'll look for the letter that is in front of the Fill command, and that's the letter H. Then I can simply use my arrow keys to navigate over to the color of the box that contains the color I want to change the background color of the cell to. I'll press ENTER, and there it is. So in class, we have students try out this for themselves.

We want to align text to the right, use wrapped text, change font size to 15, and add a border to a cell. So I'm going to do this using the ALT hotkeys. In order to align text to the right, I'll press ALT.

I'll type the letter H, and then if I look at the alignment group, I see that the letters I need to press to align text to the right is AR, as in Align Right. Then I want to apply wrapped text to this cell. I'll press ALT, H, and then I'll see the next letter I need to press to wrap text appropriately enough is W, as in Wrap Text.

I want to change the font size to 15, ALT, H, FS. Then I'll simply type 15. That adds 15 to the input box for the font size, and then I just press ENTER, and I've changed the font size.

I want to add a border to the current cell. I'll press ALT, H. Then it's going to be B, as in Border. This opens up a gallery, and within the gallery, I will see all the letters associated with the options available from the border dropdown.

I want outside borders. I'll choose the letter S. So those are a couple of ways you can use the ALT-Hotkeys to navigate around the ribbon and perform those tasks. So let's move down further and take a look at another feature that's available to you when you press ALT.

When you press ALT, instead of seeing letters next to the Quick Access toolbar, you see numbers. Now, this is very powerful because you're able to create custom keyboard shortcuts that you can access simply by pressing ALT and a single number. So right now, by default, I have the keyboard shortcuts for Saving, which is ALT-1, Undo, which is ALT-2, but I could also use Control-Z, and then Redo, which is ALT-3.

I want to be able to run Spell Check by using the ALT-Hotkey. So what I'll do is go to the Quick Access toolbar and add spelling to the fourth position. My new keyboard shortcut for spelling is now going to be ALT and the position number of spelling in the Quick Access toolbar, which is 4. This brings up the Spelling dialog box.

I can press ENTER. Excel has checked my document and tells me that Spell Check is complete and that I'm good to go. I'll press ENTER.

Now, what if I wanted to get the average of the following values? I can tell you right now there is no dedicated keyboard shortcut for Average. But what I could do is I could go to the Quick Access toolbar and see if I can find Average. I don't see it here, so I'll go to More Commands.

Now, in the list of popular commands, Average isn't even listed. So I'll have to go to All Commands. When I go to All Commands, this expands my options.

And I can alphabetically look at all the options that start with the letter A. And towards the bottom, I'll find Average. And I can add that to the fifth position. And when I click OK, it's now available to me as a keyboard shortcut.

So Average didn't have a keyboard shortcut. But now that I added to the Quick Access toolbar, if I want to come up with the average of the values on the sheet, all I would have to do is press ALT and the number 5 and then Enter. So the ALT hotkeys are very useful in navigating the ribbon and being able to select commands without needing your mouse.

You can just use keyboard shortcuts. And also, it gives you access to the Quick Access toolbar and allows you to create custom keyboard shortcuts for practically any command in Excel.