Boost your Excel efficiency by mastering quick keyboard shortcuts and useful ribbon commands for managing rows and columns. Learn key techniques for inserting, deleting, hiding, and grouping data effortlessly.
Key Insights
- Insert or delete columns and rows quickly using keyboard shortcuts: Control Plus (Ctrl +) to insert and Control Minus (Ctrl -) to delete, with laptop users needing to press Control Shift Plus (Ctrl Shift +) due to keyboard layout differences.
- Manage column visibility by hiding or unhiding through right-clicking columns or by using the Group command within Excel's Data tab Outline group, providing clear indicators of hidden data.
- Use grouping buttons to collapse and expand detailed data, such as subproducts in inventory tables, helping you organize and selectively display additional information as needed.
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Rows and Columns. In this section, we'll take a look at how to insert, delete, hide, and group rows and columns. We're going to start with this table that we have here, and I want to insert a column between columns B and C. In order to do that, I'll click on column C, and then I'll head over to the Home tab.
There is a ribbon command that I can use to insert a brand new column. I just have to head over to the Sales group, click the dropdown for Insert, and there I will see the option to insert a sheet column. One click, I've inserted a column.
Now, if I want to delete that column, I won't have far to go. Right next to Insert is the Delete command. If I click the dropdown there, I will choose Delete Sheet Columns.
Now, most of you are probably familiar with how you can do this using your mouse. You'll simply select the column, right-click, and from the right-click menu, you'll see the Insert command. If I click that, I will insert a brand new column between B and C. And if I want to delete that column, all I have to do is right-click and choose Delete.
Now, there are people who see you do this, people who use keyboard shortcuts who see you do this, who think that's way too long a process for you to insert and delete a column, almost as long as it would take for you to go to the ribbon, and then head over to the Sales group, and then click Insert, and so on. Their method only involves using the keyboard. For instance, I have this cell selected called New Column.
I'm even going to select the column by using my keyboard. The keyboard shortcut to select the column is Control Spacebar. That automatically selects the column.
Now, what's the keyboard shortcut to add a new column? Well, you can think to yourself, what is the mathematical symbol for addition? And then you'll say to yourself, the plus sign. So therefore, the keyboard shortcut to insert a new column is going to be CTRL PLUS (+). Now, logically, the keyboard shortcut to remove a column is going to be CTRL MINUS (-).
This also works for rows. So let's give equal time to rows. I'm going to head over to New Row.
And the keyboard shortcut to select a row instead of a column is going to be Shift Spacebar. And then, if I want to add a new row, I'll use the same shortcut that I used to add a column. This time, it'll be CTRL PLUS (+).
Now, if you're on a laptop, you should be aware that if you press CTRL PLUS (+), this may not occur. And that's because you'll have to press the Shift key. So you'll press Control Shift Plus to insert a column or row.
But if you're using a full-size keyboard, you can use the plus sign by the number keypad. And then you won't have to worry about that extra keyboard key. Now, if I wanted to delete the rows that I just added, the keyboard shortcut for that is going to be CTRL MINUS (-).
And I could just hold on to Control and keep pressing Minus to delete all those extra rows. Something else you may want to do as you're working with table data is you may want to hide some information in your spreadsheet. Maybe information that's in a column.
So I'm going to head over to Column H. And I'm going to right-click. And I have the option right there to hide that column. Now, if I want to reveal that column, I will need to select the columns that surround the hidden column, basically G and I. And in between them is H. So I'll right-click and then choose Unhide.
That will reveal the hidden column. Now, you also have another method that you can use to do this. That method involves selecting the column.
Going over to the Data tab and moving all the way over to the right until you get to the Outline group. Within the Outline group, you'll see there's a command called Group. Now, if I click it, it doesn't automatically hide the column.
But it does give me a grouping button that I can click on to hide that column. This makes it a little bit more obvious that there is a hidden column. This might be useful because you may not want to forget there's a hidden column with information that you may not want to share.
But if you have this button, this makes it a little bit more obvious that there is something hidden in the spreadsheet that you may need to delete before you send the spreadsheet out. If I click on the plus sign, I will reveal that hidden column. If I want to get rid of the grouping button, I can simply make sure that column is selected.
Head over to the Outline group and choose Ungroup. And now, my spreadsheet is back to normal. Hiding columns and rows are not the only reason that you would use the grouping buttons.
If we take a look at this table down below, we have Inventory and we have Values. If I click on the plus sign next to row 35, I may choose to hide and reveal certain information related to product A. If I click the plus sign, I will see I have subproducts. And these subproducts provide greater detail for product A. And so, I may need to hide information that I don't want to display and display it if I need to explain a little bit more about the values that make up product A. So, in this section, we took a look at how to insert, delete, hide, as well as group rows and columns.