[TSG] The Most Powerful Shortcut In Excel (That No One Knows!)

Excel Education for the REAL WORLD!

I hope you are doing well! I'm going to be sending you amazing Excel tips over the next 5 days that will hopefully add up to saving you a bunch of time while interacting with your spreadsheets going forward.

I hope you enjoy this one!

Today we are going to cover what I believe to be the most powerful key on your keyboard to use in Excel. The specific key I'm talking about is your F4 key.

There are actually TWO extremely powerful functionalities triggered by this shortcut and very few Excel users know both of them.

In Excel, you can use cell references in formulas to refer to specific cells or ranges of cells. When you copy and paste a formula to another cell, Excel automatically adjusts the cell references based on the new location. However, if you want a cell reference to remain fixed regardless of where you copy the formula, you will need to use absolute cell referencing.

To do this, you need to add a dollar sign ($) before the row and/or column reference in the cell reference. For example, if you want to fix the reference to cell A1, you can write it as $A$1.

Instead of typing the dollar signs manually, you can use the F4 keyboard shortcut to quickly toggle between the four types of cell references: absolute ($A$1), relative (A1), and mixed ($A1 or A$1).

You can also utilize this functionality on a range reference such as =SUM(A1:A10). Simply use your mouse to highlight the colon symbol (:), then proceed to use your F4 key. Both cell references associated with the highlighted colon will cycle through the four types of cell references.

Microsoft calls this shortcut the "Repeat" shortcut. Essentially what it does is repeat the last action you performed in Excel. For example, what if you need to insert a bunch of columns sporadically throughout your spreadsheet?

You have one of three options:

1. You can right-click and insert columns individually throughout the spreadsheet (I've definitely done this in the past and it is painful!)
2. You can hit up Google and find out what the keyboard shortcut is for inserting a column and then use it (another good option, but you will probably forget this shortcut if you are not using it every day)
3. You can insert a column ONCE and then continue using F4 to insert columns going forward.

The HUGE advantage to using F4 is you don't have to memorize a bunch of obscure keyboard shortcuts you only use once in a blue moon (very infrequently). Just do your action manually once and continue repeating it with F4. It's really that simple and if you already currently use F4 to modify your formulas, you probably already have it memorized as a key to use.

I use the repeat F4 shortcut all the time to:

• Format cells with particular colors
• Insert/Delete things

So try to get it in your head to start using this powerful shortcut and then start spreading the word to all your colleagues. I promise they will think you are an Excel genius after sharing this tip!

I've written A LOT about Excel over the years. Here are a few articles that might teach you something new today!

• Find and Replace All With Excel VBA
• XLOOKUP Formula To Return All Matches
• Add Vertical Lines To Excel Charts Like A Pro! [Guide]
• Writing Your Own Custom Number Formats in Excel

Over the years I've solved issues throughout my career by building my own Excel Add-in solutions.

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This game was developed by Robert Kiyosaki. You might recognize his name from the very popular book Rich Dad Poor Dad. While it is a fantastic book that (in my opinion) should be required reading in school, that book was actually written as an instruction manual to sell this very board game.

I was luckily introduced to this game right after college and it forced me to think about how to reduce my monthly bills, pay off debt, and the difference between personal assets and liabilities.

While it is pretty expensive compared to your typical board game, I view this as an investment that is fun to play and will also allow you to transfer game-winning strategies into strategies you can use to better manage your finances in real life!

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You are more than welcome to invite any one of your friends or colleagues who might also benefit from this newsletter. Simply send them the below link and they can get signed up for free as you did.

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Hopefully, this newsletter brought you some value today. I absolutely love sharing the tips I've come across or developed over the years and also receiving feedback from everyone.

If you have any thoughts on the topics covered in this email, feel free to respond back.

Tomorrow, we'll be discussing something you've likely been doing wrong in Excel this whole time! Can you believe that? See you tomorrow!

Chris
Founder, TheSpreadsheetGuru.com