The Mouse Rules! (Sometimes)

If you have been a reader of this blog for any length of time, you know that I am a big advocate of using Keyboard Shortcuts in Excel.  That being said, there are certain times when The Mouse Rules!

Let’s take a look at Five Great Shortcuts using the mouse in Excel:

Move Selected Cells by Dragging the Border

1.      Select a range of cells

2.      Drag the thick border line to move the cells

3.      Celebrate that this is faster than keyboard shortcuts!

Autofit Column Widths

1.      Select the columns you want to adjust

2.      Double click on the column letter separator line

3.      Bamm!  Perfect Fit!

4.      Bonus!  You can also use this technique to adjust row heights

Alt+Click for Stock Quotes

1.      Enter a company stock symbol in a cell (SBUX for Starbucks sounds good to me at the moment…)

2.      Alt+click the cell to launch the research pane

3.      Convenient way to follow your favorite stocks!

Select Non-Contiguous Ranges

1.      Use Ctrl+Click to select non-contiguous cells

2.      Many uses, such as special selections for formulas, formatting, editing

3.      How Cool is that!

 Grab the Handle for Autofilling

1.      Select a cell or range of cells

2.      Grab the Handle (small black square at the lower-right

3.      Drag horizontally or vertically to autofill the data (works on numbers, days of the week, and even Custom Data such as Week 1, Week 2…, Employee 1, Employee 2, etc.)

4.      Bonus: If your range is aligned with an adjacent range, simply Double-Click the handle!

 Yes, Keyboard shortcuts totally Rock, but sometimes The Mouse Rules!