0006 Excel Shortcuts: How to Move to the Beginning and End of Your Spreadsheet

Stop wasting time scrolling with the mouse, and jump instantly to the bottom right or top left of your worksheet using this shortcut duo.

In this video, I’ll show you exactly how to move to the beginning and end of your spreadsheet quickly and precisely.

Download FREE Hands-On Exercises

Full Video Transcript:

Have you ever found yourself scrolling the mouse wheel like your life depended on it, something I like to call “The scroll of shame?” Don’t worry, we’ve all been there.

But in fact, those marathon scrolling sessions are long behind you once you learn this shortcut I’m about to teach you, and it’s actually a shortcut duo that lets you go to the very first and very last cell of your worksheet.

A less common but super valuable shortcut is how to move to the beginning and end of your active worksheet. The way to do it is to hit CTRL + HOME to jump to the top left and CTRL + END to jump to the bottom right.

It all depends on how much data you have in your sheet. So, the way to remember it is you’re catapulting. CTRL sounds like “Catapult,” at least it starts with the same letter, and you’re going to jump really quickly to the beginning, the top left, or the end, the bottom right.

If you’re on a Mac, you’re going to hit CTRL + fn + LEFT, which is really the same as the HOME, and you’re going to hit CTRL + fn + RIGHT to get to the end, to go to the first cell, last cell.

Couple things to keep in mind. If you go to a worksheet that has a lot of data, instead of scrolling around and trying to find the end and kind of struggling to see where you are, hit CTRL + END and you’ll know for sure where the end of your data is, and CTRL + HOME will you bring you back to the top. This is a really great application of when to use this shortcut.

Another example is if you have what seems to be a blank sheet and you do CTRL + END, you might jump very, very far down, and in fact, there might be something as seemingly innocent as a space, but that’s taking up memory on your sheet.

I actually had one client who had tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of blank cells that were completely not necessary, and the file started out as 70 MB large. That was seven, zero. By removing all those unused cells, we actually cut down the file size by about 95%, so it’s seemingly innocent, but actually can cause a lot of problems.

I’ve created some exercises where you can actually reinforce these shortcuts specifically. So, you’re going to go the X’s over here at the top. You’re going to find the cell that has the first X, hit CTRL + X on the PC or COMMAND + X on the Mac, and now you’re going to use the shortcut CTRL + END to jump to the bottom. Notice you didn’t even have to look for it. It’s there waiting for you because that’s where the end of the sheet is, and you’re going to find that spot and CTRL + V on the PC or COMMAND + V on the Mac to paste.

Don’t forget to visit excelshir.com where you can download these exercises, along with other free resources such as keyboard shortcut cheat sheets for both PC and Mac.

Thanks for watching. See you next time, and in the spirit of Oprah Winfrey, share the Excel love. It’ll be your “Aha!” moment.

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