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Step-by-Step Guide: Customize Mac Keyboard Shortcuts

1. Go to System Preferences.
   • Shir Tip: Use Spotlight Search to open System Preferences.
     • Press COMMAND + SPACE to open “Spotlight Search.”
     • Type “sys” and it will most likely autofill “System Preferences”.
     • Press RETURN.
2. Click on the “Keyboard” icon.
3. Click on the “Shortcuts” tab on the top of the window.
4. Click on “App Shortcuts” on the left panel.
5. Click on the “+” (plus) button to add a new shortcut.
   • Choose “Microsoft Excel” from the “Application” dropdown list. NOTE: If Microsoft Excel does NOT appear in the list, you might need to select “Other” at the bottom and find it in your Applications folder.
   • Type in the exact name of the menu command you want to add. For example, if you want to create a shortcut to zoom, you must type in “Zoom…” with the 3 dots, since that is how it appears under the “View” menu in Excel.
   • Click in the “Keyboard Shortcut” text box, and then actually type the shortcut (it will fill in the correct symbols for the keys you are using. For example: ⌃⇧Q for CTRL + SHIFT + Q).
   • Click the “Add” button.
6. Test the shortcut you just created to make sure it is working the way you want it to.
7. Eat a plum, cause you are done! 🙂

 

Full Video Transcript:

Here are step-by-step instructions how to customize keyboard shortcuts on the Mac from Microsoft Excel.

Step 1 is go to your System Preferences. Once you’re here, go ahead and go to the Keyboard section.

Then you’re going to go on to the Shortcuts tab on top. Once you’re there, you’ll get a whole bunch of choices here on the left. Choose App Shortcuts, and then find Microsoft Excel Mac 2016.

If it’s not there, you’ll have to go ahead and hit a + and find the application in a list, and then actually make sure, this is where it gets tricky, type in the exact name of the menu command you want to add. Under File, under Edit, under essentially any of those top menu items, type it out exactly as it appears, even if there’s a “…”, that’s how you have to have it.

Once you do, you’ll actually use the shortcut, and it will generate the symbols for you. So that is how you can actually create the shortcut and have it save for you this way.

One last word of advice. Test out the shortcut you just made to make sure that it actually works before moving on. One cool tip to get to the System Preferences faster is to hit COMMAND + SPACE to get the Spotlight search where you can type in System Preferences, or even just “Sys”. Hit Enter, and it brings you to this Home section of the System Preferences.

That’s how you create custom shortcuts for Excel on your Mac.