If you are still re-formatting your spreadsheets from scratch every time, you are throwing away hours of your life needlessly.

Instead, you can copy and paste formatting only, using the shortcut in this video.

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Copying and pasting formatting is one of the most time-saving shortcuts you will ever learn, because it lets you take your previous work and apply it anywhere you want in a snap.

You may not know this, but when you’ve been copying and pasting for all these years, you’re pasting everything that came with it. So, the formulas, the formatting, the other properties behind the scenes that you may not have even seen. The beauty of this shortcut is that you learn how to copy and paste the formatting only, and the key to this is with Paste Special.

So, the only way this works is, first, you’re going to actually take the cell that has the formatting that you want, select it, copy it with CTRL + C on the PC and COMMAND + C on the Mac, and then choose the cell that has…essentially where you want to apply it to, and then you’re going to do a CTRL + ALT + V on the PC, right? You’re doing a regular paste with CTRL + V, but a Paste Special by adding the ALT key in there, which brings you to this Paste Special window.

You can move up and down with the arrows, or better yet, you can actually jump to the specific option you want by going to whatever’s underlined. So, ALT + T for formats, and notice that you can just hit ENTER and apply this formatting to this spot right here, hit ESC to get out of it.

So, the key is to copy first, then choose where you want to apply it to, CTRL + ALT + V for Paste Special, and ALT + T to jump to that spot on the window.

On the Mac, it’s very much the same thing, the shortcut is a tiny bit different. And so what you need to do here is copy with COMMAND + C, choose the cell you want and CTRL + COMMAND + V to get the Paste Special, and this time you’ll hit the fn + T for format.

Basically, you can’t use F because that’s for formulas. So, the T over here is underlined, on the PC at least, and it gives you an indication. So, here you’re just kind of flying blind, but it’s okay, just hit ENTER and it’ll apply it for you, and hit ESC to be out of it. And that’s basically how that works.

Let’s now take this in action and go to some exercise where you can actually drill this in and remember these shortcuts by practicing it over and over again, take the left side over here and make it look like the right.

And in this case, you’re going to take this format over here, you can copy a bunch at once like so and Paste Special the format only. And then you’ll have exactly the right look.

Notice there’s some border issues going on, so you can’t do it all at once, you may have to do it in sections. But I’ll let you figure that one out because that’s even more fun that way.

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 I believe it was Tony Robbins who said, “The path to enlightenment is through sharing the Excel love.” I’m a big fan.

In Microsoft Word pressing ENTER will give you a new line. However, in Microsoft Excel, you need to use a specific shortcut, which is the topic of this video.

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Ever try to add a new line inside of a cell only to hit ENTER and have it move down one cell? Super annoying.

But in this video, I’ll teach to how to bypass that habit that Excel has and add that new line inside the cell.

Adding a new line inside of a cell is great when you want to cut off specific words inside of like a header and you want to force it to look a certain way. And every time you’ve tried to do it with hitting ENTER and it not working, it’s because you’re not using this shortcut properly.

So instead, you’re going to be writing out your cell. I’m going to actually double-click on the cell to edit it, or I can use this additional peripheral helpful shortcut of F2 to actually edit the cell contents and have the cursor go at the end.

And now, I’m going to hit ALT + ENTER to force that new line and say, “awesome” over here, and hit ENTER to save or complete that cell entry, and now, it’s going to force that new line because I did the ALT + ENTER, instead of just ENTER by itself.

If you’re on a Mac, on the other hand, you’ll be using OPT + RETURN to create that line break inside the cell. F2 is the same, or you can even use CTRL + U, not COMMAND, but CTRL + U to edit the cell contents, and RETURN to complete the cell entry.

Couple things to note, CTRL + OPT + RETURN might work instead of OPT + RETURN. And if F2 doesn’t work, you might want to try fn + F2. A whole bunch of little quirky nuances here, just read through this and try it out. You can also change the system preferences and make it more standard and more easy to use.

So that’s a little bit more quirky for the Mac. PC is pretty simple, just ALT + ENTER to create that new line inside of the cell.

A great way to practice this specific shortcut is to go to this exercise here and create that new line inside of these cells, and actually from there, ALT + ENTER and type the word “line,” hit ENTER, and do that for all of these, and make it look exactly the same from left to the right. Have it match and you’ll be great.

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 as they say, “The devil’s in the details,” unless you share the Excel love, then you’re all set.

After painstakingly changing your column widths, there’s no need to do that work over again. Just use the shortcut I’m about to teach you to copy and paste the column width in a snap!

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If you’re anything like me, you probably spent the better half of your adult life not knowing that you could copy and paste column widths in Excel.

Now that you know it’s possible, today I’m going to teach you exactly how to do it.

In the previous video, I showed you how to change column widths and row heights. You can actually go ahead and click on the link in the description in case you missed it.

Now that you’ve done that work already, I’m going to teach you how to copy and paste only the widths of the columns from one section to another, using a little something I like to call “Paste Special.” Since Microsoft calls it Paste Special too, that’s what we’ll all be calling it from here on out.

Paste Special’s one of those amazing things that, if you’re using it correctly, you’re saving yourself tons of time every single time that you’re using Excel, but if you don’t use it, you’re really missing out.

The key to it is to first choose and select the cell that has the quality that you want to it. For example, if I want to take this cell right here, and actually this entire column really, I’ll go ahead and expand the selection using CTRL + SPACE. I’ll do a little CTRL + C to copy it.

Now, I’m not going to paste the actual contents, but what I will do is paste the width of the column. I can go ahead and do CTRL + SPACE again to select this column here, or I can just choose a single cell and do CTRL + ALT + V. Now notice what happens. I threw an ALT in there. Instead of doing a regular paste with a CTRL + V, I’m using CTRL + ALT + V, which brings me to Paste Special.

And of course, the magic here completely is the column width. I can jump to this even quicker by using the ALT + W on the PC to get to that spot immediately. I’ll hit OK, and it’s now going to obviously give me an error message, because why not? In fact, that thing I said before, let’s make it width, and then it’s going to work. See, it’s always better to make it like to like. If you’re doing a whole column, then paste a whole column. Otherwise it’ll yell at you, basically.

That’s how you want to do it. I can hit ESC to get rid of these little borders here. It’s just showing it’s on the clipboard. The whole point is, you’re doing a Copy and a Paste Special with just the column width.

Let’s see this in the Mac. It’s very much the same thing. The whole point on the Mac is that instead of doing it with…let’s do, for example, over here. Same concept. I’ll do CTRL + SPACE to get the whole column, COMMAND + C to copy. I’ll do CTRL + SPACE to get this new column over here, and do CTRL + COMMAND + V to bring my Paste Special window up here.

The only difference is, I’m not going to do ALT, I’m going to do a fn + W. I hit the fn + W, it will get you to this spot right here. Then you do OK, and it will apply that width to there as well. Hit ESC to get rid of that.

If you want to lock in this shortcut, then let’s go ahead and go to this exercise, where you’re actually going to take the original column width over here, you’re going to copy it, and you’re going to paste it over to these.

It’s really, really simple, but the whole point is to get it to look like it does on the right. Use that shortcut and then do it as many times as you need to until you can do it with your eyes closed. Enjoy.

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 remember, every journey begins with a first step. May I suggest that first step be to share the Excel love. I read it in a fortune cookie once. It was delicious.

You know those annoying # signs that pop up on your spreadsheet every once in a while? It’s because your columns aren’t wide enough!

In today’s video, I’m going to teach you how to change the column width and row height with laser-like precision and speed.

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If you’re still using the mouse to adjust the column widths manually, I guarantee you that you’re leaving minutes on the table every single day.

Minutes that you could be spending getting coffee, gossiping with coworkers, or watching videos of corny Excel instructors.

No matter what industry you’re in or what your job is, or pretty much what you’re doing with your life, you will always need to change column widths and row heights. It’s just a fact of life. It’s just how it is.

There’s two main approaches. You can do the quick and dirty approach, and the precise guess and check. Quick and dirty refers to AutoFit, and the guess and check refers to changing the exact column width or row height. So, let me show you both.

If you’re on a PC, you want to go ahead and use the ALT + H + O + W to set the column width. Now, notice something about all of these is that they’re based on the current selection. So, for example, if I take all of this here and I want to expand it to fit all of them, I’m not just going to go ahead and click this way because that takes me forever.

Instead, I’m going to select all of these and do ALT + H + O, right? H for Home, O for Format, and I want to do a W for Width. If I wanted to guess exactly how much, because I’ve been doing this a long time, I’m going to guess probably, like, 14, and it’s pretty close, right?

But if I want it to be exact, I would do ALT + H + O + I to AutoFit, which is a really big time saver, and it’s based on the selection, meaning if I do ALT + H + O + I here, it’s going to fit only to this level. If I want to do the entire column, ALT + H + O + I.

If I, you know, hit ALT first, it’ll work, and it’ll give us to all of that because I have a lot of text underneath, so be aware of what you’re selecting before you actually put that shortcut into effect.

If you want to do the row, in contrast, it’s going to be ALT + H + O + H for the Row Height. Usually the default is 15. Or you can actually go ahead and do ALT + H + O + A to AutoFit the row height.

So, how do we remember all this? There’s a couple really corny Santa Claus tricks here, so just bear with me.

W is for width, which is super easy. H is for height, but for the I and the A, just think of the I as, like, suck it in, Santa, and the fact that I is, like, the most narrow vertical line anyway, so it will, you know, suck it in, basically.

A is, like, think of an attic, and you got to watch your head in the attic because they have low ceilings. You want to fit that row so it’s nice and snug, and it’s really compact. So, again, you always start with the H + O. That’s why I thought of Santa Claus. HO HO HO HO, get it? Okay.

And then there’s the Mac equivalent, which is all based on the customized shortcuts. So, go ahead and go to the description of this video and click on the link to go step-by-step on how to create your own Mac keyboard shortcuts. otherwise these will not work at all. So, again, I chose similar keys so that it’s actually very much related to the same as the PC.

Wishing you had your own exercises to follow along with? Well, fortunately, they’re right here. Just go ahead and actually follow through with each of these to the point where the left side looks exactly like the right. And you’ll notice that the numbers themselves are different on the PC than on the Mac, but again, just use the ones that correspond to the system that you’re using.

So, If I have a PC here, I’m going to keep the default at 8.43, but this one I’m going to do ALT + H + O + W and get the 9 here and hit ENTER, and it’s going to adjust it for me that way.

So, I’m going to go through each one. You can select a single cell or the entire column if you’re doing the Adjust Width with ALT + H + O + W because it’ll affect the whole column anyway. So, that’s for the Set Column Width.

Similar thing with the row height, and then you’re going to do AutoFit. So, be aware of what you’re selecting first. That’s the trick to this whole thing to make it look exactly like this. You’ll get a feel for it and see how it works, but, basically, that’s it, and then when you’re done, you want to actually go ahead and make sure that everything wraps up nicely.

The trick to this whole thing is that when you’re using Wrap Text, things can get a little bit weird because it doesn’t know how you want to, basically, AutoFit them. So, what I mean by that is…I’m going to do a little AutoFit of the row. So, ALT + H + O + A is how I get this point, but I don’t know. If I do ALT + H + O + I it’s going to cut it off here, but if I’m over here, for example, and I do ALT + H + O + I, it’s different.

It doesn’t always know what to do, so this is more of the art of Excel than the science. So, kind of get it most of the way there first, but then get more precise by doing ALT + H + O + W and maybe doing it to a four. And then you can snug it in so it’s already cut off at the right word, that kind of thing. So, again, just play with it and get the feel for it, but basically, have fun and learn.

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 one last exercise. Think of the person you love the most. Call them up and share the Excel love. Sharing is caring.

FACT: Most Excel files either have way too many borders, or not enough. The reason? Formatting borders with the mouse is inconvenient and time consuming.

The solution? Watch this video and learn 6 Excel shortcuts for the most common border formats.

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Can I ask you a personal question? How much time are you spending creating borders? If it’s any more than a few seconds, you’re taking way too long.

But don’t worry, in this video, I’ll show you how to create the exact borders you want, fast.

We all know borders are important because it separates information, like headers or total rows from the rest of the table.

But the real question is how do we create the exact borders we want and how do we do it efficiently? We can actually do it very, very fast and very efficiently with the following shortcut.

So for the PC, we want to do things like CTRL + SHIFT + & to create an outside border on the current selection. Let me show you how this works, right? If I’m over here and I do CTRL + SHIFT + &, it looks like nothing happened, but as soon as I move the selection away, I’ve left that outside border there in place. It’s there, it’s waiting, it’s awesome.

You can even select a few different cells and then do that shortcut CTRL + SHIFT + & and then you move aside and you get that same effect.

Let’s go to the next shortcut. Over here is the CTRL + SHIFT + _ (Underscore) to remove the outside border from the current selection. So, if I want to take this one only, I can do CTRL + SHIFT + _ (Underscore) and it’s going to remove it, or I can take an entire selection like this and overlap it that way, if I want to save some time to do it across the board.

The memory trick here is to think of it as an ampersand, you’re adding a lot of borders, hence the outside, everything up on a perimeter of the current selection.

The underscore is like a blank, so you want to fill in the blanks, right? It’s going to remove whatever border you had on the outside.

The next series of shortcuts are going to be a little bit more involved, in the sense that we have the ALT + H + B and then a letter. So, the way that works here is…let me show you each example. ALT + H + B Home Border and we get a ton of options, but we don’t want to use all these because they’re not as useful.

In fact, the P is really helpful because it’s going to be the top. Now, T was already taken, but P, you want to think of it as popping the top off the Pringles. It’s a lot of P’s in the sentence but it basically helps you remember to put it towards the top, right?

If you want to do the bottom, it’s ALT + H + B + O for the bottom. Think of O as like, the original flavor of Pringles, which is the bottom of the barrel, because some people hate it, apparently. And you can also think of it as like a Pringles can on a table and tracing a pencil around it and it draws a little O there. So ALT + H + B + O will get you to the bottom of whatever the current selection is.

In contrast, ALT + H + B + L is for left border, ALT + H + B + R is for right, those are really straightforward. So again, you can do all the directions you want based on the current selection if you just start with the ALT + H + B and then a letter that corresponds to the border that you want.

Things are a little bit different for the Mac. So, if we want to go back to the other sheet here, we’ll see that, in fact, the same things can be achieved, but it’s done a little bit differently.

So, with the Mac, you want to use the OPT + COMMAND + 0 (Zero) to add the outside border. If you look at it, it’s kind of like an outside perimeter. Sort of. But basically, helps you draw the outside border.

If you do the OPT + COMMAND + _ (Underscore), that’s the same to remove the outside border, and then this is one of those rare cases where Mac is better than a PC, in terms of the default shortcuts, because you just use the arrows. You do OPT + COMMAND + UP up to create a top border, DOWN for a bottom border etc. etc. I think that’s awesome and I love that about the Mac shortcuts there. So, if you have a Mac, enjoy it while you can.

Let’s see these bad boys in action, right? Go ahead and go to these different tabs and actually complete these exercises. So, you want to make the left section here match with the right section in the example, and use the borders shortcuts that we just learned.

So, select the cells you want first and then put into effect the actual shortcut CTRL + SHIFT + &, in this case, and you’ll just go through and fill in everything until it looks identical and until you pretty much have this down cold. So, go ahead and practice it for the outside border, removing borders, top, bottom, left, right, and if you’re feeling fancy, little challenge, anyone want to play pong, anyone? Yeah? Okay, great.

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 and I’ll see you next time. And share that Excel love. Yeah, it’s contagious.