One major advantage that Excel has over paper & pen is that you can literally shift EVERYTHING over and make space for more information without disturbing your existing work. You can also clean things up by removing unused information (no more erasing feverishly!).

In this video, I will teach you how to insert and delete cells, rows, and columns quickly and correctly.

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Ever hand in a report to your boss, only to have her respond with, “Where’s the March data?”

Don’t worry, there’s a super quick fix to this and it involves inserting cells, rows or columns, which is the topic of this video.

This is one of the most powerful shortcuts in Excel because it lets you go back and add new information to an existing project, while keeping the cell references and everything else intact.

On the flip side, when you’re deleting, make sure to do so with caution because you can only undo up to a certain point. And once your information is lost, it’s pretty much gone forever and no amount of kicking or screaming is going to bring it back.

Fortunately, the actual shortcut here is very, very straightforward. To add or insert cells, you’re going to hit CTRL + + (plus). To delete, you’re going to do CTRL + - (minus). That’s really it, and this is one of those rare times where our Mac and PC shortcuts are identical.

The only nuance to this is you’re going to select first, before you actually use this shortcut. So, let me show you what I mean. If you want to take an entire row, you’re going to select the row and then insert with CTRL + + (plus) to get that row inserted. If you want to choose an entire column, you’ll do it this way and then do it afterwards.

If you want to do an entire cell, you’ll get this pop-up window saying, “Do you want to shift the cells right or down?” You’ll never really need to use these two because you can just select the entire row or column first. That saves you some trouble. But again, think about how you want to shift stuff over to the right or down. Sometimes it varies, based on what you’re trying to do.

Here are some exercises that I’ve created specifically to reinforce these shortcuts, and practice as many times as you want. So, to insert all the cells here, you’re going to end up getting the side on the left to match exactly with the side on the right. And the way to do this, in this example, is to insert the cell, so CTRL + + (plus).

Again, notice I’ve selected the cell first. Shift it to the right because I want this number to move over to the right, and hit “Okay.” And I do the same type of thing over, make sure I’m shifting around until it matches exactly.

You’re going to go through insert the cells, you’re going to do delete all the cells. You’re going to insert the rows, delete the rows, insert columns, delete columns. Lots to do, but it’s all under the same umbrella of inserting cells with CTRL + + (plus) and deleting cells with CTRL + - (minus).

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 words of William Shakespeare, “To err is human, but sharing the Excel love, now, that’s divine.” He’s so right.

Have you ever needed to clear PART of a cell, but not all of it? If so, this video is for you!

It will save you minutes, hours, or days, depending on how complex your spreadsheet is :).

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I don’t know if you know this, but Excel can actually hold a lot of different types of information, sometimes all within a single cell.

And I’m not just talking about numbers or text. There are things like comments and hyperlinks and other data that’s actually there behind the scenes that may not be visible.

So, what happens when you want to clear away some of it, but not all of it? Well, today I’m going to teach you the shortcut on how to clear cell contents.

Instead of being sloppy about deleting information, there’s actually a way to be very precise and efficient about what specific information you want to get rid of, especially when your spreadsheets start getting more complex.

So, here are a number of different ways to clear contents. The first one is Delete. If you actually hit the DEL key, it will remove all of the contents without touching anything else. I’m going to bring that back with a little undo action.

The other ones are all based on the ALT key as the starting point. So, ALT + H for Home, E for the Clear, and then we have a whole bunch of options.

And the memory tricks for all of these is going to be, “Hey, everyone, clear all,” or, “Hey, everyone, clear formats,” “Hey, everyone, clear messages.” All right? The messages part is referring to the comments. Or, “Hey, everyone, remove hyperlinks.”

So it’s all related to that first letter, but you have to get to it with the ALT + H + E something. So, for a clear all, ALT + H + E + A and it will remove not just that content itself, but all the data along with it. Same idea for formats, for comments, for hyperlinks. We’re going to go through each one.

A couple things to note, the DEL key itself is what you want to use when you have multiple cells selected to clear the contents. Instead of the Backspace, which will only give you this annoying first cell removed, but then the blinking cursor, not what you want. So, people usually make that mistake. Don’t make that mistake, just hit the DEL key instead of the Backspace.

For the Mac, there is the other way of doing this, which is to use the fn + Delete on the keyboard. And for the rest of these, these are all customized, so go ahead and go to the description of this video, click on the link for how to customize your Mac keyboard shortcuts, and go through all those steps to do it in detail.

Something that I cannot stress enough is the importance of selecting the cells first, and then making the change, right? “Select, then effect.” So, don’t just start deleting things, select the cell or cells that you want, and then use the shortcut to have it take effect.

Here are a few exercises I created specifically designed to help you practice and reinforce all the different shortcuts. So, go ahead and make the left section here match exactly as it appears on the right using the keyboard shortcuts that we talked about.

So, in this one, we’re going to use the DEL key, we’re going to have…go ahead and select all of it and clear it out and continue to go through until it’s all matching the same way.

And notice that each one uses its own, go through each of these, and at the end, there is a challenge to use a combination of all the different ways to make it look exactly the same.

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, dream big, live your truth, and share the Excel love. I do.

The whole point of headers is to accurately describe the data underneath them. But what good are headers if they disappear every time you scroll down?!?!

Don’t worry, in this video I will teach you exactly how to freeze your headers at the top of the screen, so you always know which data you are looking at.

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Have you ever gotten lost in a sea of data with no reference point?

Odds are it’s because you have not frozen your headers. Don’t worry. In this video, I’ll teach you exactly how to do it.

The whole point of freezing cells is to keep certain parts of the screen in place while you’re scrolling somewhere else.

And even though there’s many different ways you can use this, the most common and, I think, one of the most helpful ways to do this is to keep your headers frozen at the top.

So, the way to do this on the PC is with ALT + W + F + F, and it’s all activated through the ribbon. So, ALT + W will get to the “View,” F will get to “Freeze Panes” and F will get you to “Freeze Panes” again. You can safely ignore both of these bottom choices because we’re going to cover only this top choice and it’s based on the current selection.

So, I’ll explain exactly how that works in a second. The key thing to remember here is, “Why is the fudge freezing?” That’s all you have to remember, and then you’ll get the whole freezing panes concept down.

If you’re on a Mac, you have to customize your own keyboard shortcuts. So, go to the description of this video, click on the link, and there’s a separate video that goes through detailed step-by-step instructions on how to customize your own keyboard shortcuts.

I recommend using these two because you can’t use an Undo. You have to use one step for Freeze and, again, a different step for Unfreeze.

Let’s see it in action. And go to this page here and actually select, first, the entire row, so that above that row is where I want the frozen section to be.

So, here’s the setup for it. I do ALT + W + F + F, and now that whole top section is frozen where all the rows 1 through 4 are there. If I want to undo, I can’t do CTRL + Z, I have to back, ALT + W + F. And, again, I hit F again. Notice that it’s changing the name here. It’s “Unfreeze” at this point. So that’s how you freeze the rows.

On the flip side, you can do the columns by choosing the column after the frozen point. So it’s always going to the left of that spot, ALT + W + F + F. And now it’s frozen left-to-right which is, again, pretty helpful if you have things such as names, dates, IDs, something that has to stay visible even when you’re scrolling.

Most people know about these two but what they don’t know about is the third option, So, let me undo it by ALT + W + F + F and choose not a row or a column but a single cell. And this is the point where, at the top left, it’s going to be the frozen point.

So, again, ALT + W + F + F. Not only is it frozen up and down, but it’s also frozen left and right, which is super helpful when you have the headers at the top as well as information on the left that you always need to see.

One caveat here, one thing to avoid is getting lost in your data and saying, “Hey, what happened to my information?” and you go up top and you think you are missing things. You just have to go one down, past that frozen point, to actually pop it back into place and see everything visible again.

So that may happen where, if you’re going down and you go all the way back up, it looks weird. You just have to just go down a little bit more individually, past that frozen point, and everything will pop back into place.

Here are specific exercises I’ve created to help you practice and actually learn all of these shortcuts really, really well. So, go ahead and fill this out.

Freeze the cells along the black border itself. So, again, choose the section underneath, ALT + W + F + F. They’ll be frozen that way for the row. Do the same thing for the column, and the same thing for the rows and columns at the same time. And I recommend using this pretty much all the time because you’ll always have information at the top that you kind of always want to see.

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 next time you’re with friends and family, go ahead and share that Excel love. Oh. Oh, they’ll thank you for it.

Fact: When it comes to spreadsheets, size matters.

If the text is too small, make it easier to read by zooming in. On the flip side, if you can’t see everything you need to without scrolling, try zooming out.

Either way, make it easier for your boss, colleagues, and yourself by learning how to zoom in and out quickly and effortlessly by using the shortcuts I’m about to teach you.

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How many times have you received a spreadsheet only to have a really hard time reading it because the text was way too small?

It happens to me all the time, and the first thing I do is zoom in to the correct level. That’s exactly what I’m going to teach you in this video.

What’s wrong with this picture?

If you can read any of this, then I’m extremely impressed. This is way too small, and the only thing we can possibly do before doing anything else is zooming in, right?

That is such a key thing that so many of my clients somehow seem to forget, and they make it really difficult for me to actually read what they’re actually using on a daily basis. So don’t ever make it hard for someone to read your spreadsheet.

Always zoom in very, very nice and big, but not too big because then you can’t see everything that you want to see. So that’s pretty much the essence of this video. And the way to do this with the keyboard is, on the PC, it’s ALT + W + Q will get you to this zoom window.

You can use any one of these presets. You can use up and down arrows to select them. You can use the ALT and then one of those numbers or letters that’s corresponding to the underlined section, and it will jump to that spot. And if you want to type in your own number, I like 125, and hit ENTER, it will now jump to that specific zoom.

On a Mac, what you need to do is actually customize your keyboard shortcut. There is a separate video. Check out the description of this video and click on the link for detailed, step by step instructions.

In this case, it is CTRL + SHIFT + Q, and the “Q” looks like a little magnifying glass. So you’re like Sherlock Holmes for a day and you want to say, “Hey, where’s my magnifying glass?” That’s how I actually figure out how to zoom in with that keyboard shortcut.

If you want another way to do this, you can actually press and hold the CTRL key and then scroll up and down to zoom in and out. That’s actually how I’ve been doing it. You may not have even noticed, but that’s how I did it.

Here are a couple exercises to reinforce these shortcuts and help you practice them. So on the tab itself, on the name of it, it tells you how much you need to zoom in to.

Go ahead and use those shortcuts. In this case, on a PC, ALT + W + Q. Hit TAB to move to this next box and then type in 400 and then hit ENTER, and you’re going to get to the right spot.

Again, just follow the prompts on each of these, and you’ll get to the right approach. And that way, you can practice all of these shortcuts to your heart’s content.

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.

Thank you for watching, and I’ll see you next time. And do me a favor. Share that Excel love.

My mother always told me “Everyone is special in their own way.” What she didn’t tell me, is that every cell in a spreadsheet is special too.

In this video, I will teach you how to go to a specific cell or range of cells using their special traits. This is perfect for jumping to a specific spot without scrolling, and for making mass changes in an extremely targeted and smart way. Get excited.

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Has your boss ever asked you to change the formulas to gray font and the numbers to blue font?

Well, in this video, I’m going to teach you how to do this in a few seconds instead of a few hours.

This shortcut has 2 components. The first is going to a very specific spot on your sheet if you know exactly where you want to go.

For example, if I want to go to a very, very low point, a high row number, but I don’t want to have to scroll, I would just do CTRL + G, and I would “Go To” for example, A9999, and I can just hit ENTER and I go immediately to that spot without any scrolling whatsoever. So, that’s a really simple way to move really quickly in a very targeted way, but the real, real power of this is to use the “Go To” with the “Special” option, all right?

So, when you hit “Special”, you’re going to choose a very special kind of cell, and I recommend you go through each one of these in more detail, but for now, let’s just look at, for example, a constant, and we can choose Only Numbers, Only Text, Only Logical, Only Errors, for example. Let’s choose Only Text.

It will scan through this entire sheet, and it will highlight, even if they’re not next to each other, all the cells that match that criteria, which means in one move now, I can make them all bold, or all italic, or anything. So, this is a very powerful way to do massive edits without having to search for it.

One nuance here is that you can actually choose the whole selection that you want first, and then it will match that criteria only within it. So, I’ll hit the Special with the ALT + S now to jump right to it, and I’ll go ahead and choose the ALT plus the letter to actually correspond to the underline here.

So, I want a Constant, so it’s ALT + O, and I’m going to uncheck the other ones that I don’t want, so ALT + U, ALT + G, and ALT + E to leave only the text. Hit ENTER, and now only these cells are selected, because I started first with that selection. If you choose nothing, it’ll go and look for the whole sheet as one.

I’ve created a series of exercises for you to practice and reinforce these Excel shortcuts. So, for example, you’re going to go to this worksheet over here and move the X’s by CTRL + X on the PC, COMMAND + X on the Mac, and then go to this exact reference by hitting CTRL + G, and GO35. It will jump to that spot, and you’ll know you’re in the right place because I put a little arrow for you. And CTRL + V on the PC or COMMAND + V on the Mac, and then you can actually keep going back and doing that for all of these.

The next exercise is to go to Special Cells. This one’s more involved, but you can totally get the hang of this as soon as you start going. So, make this side over here on the left match the format on the right in this very specific way, and if you want little hints, the legend here explains how it all works. So, anything that’s a text, right? You’re going to select this whole area here, you’re going to do your CTRL + G, and then your ALT + S on the PC to choose only the text. You’re going to turn off anything that’s not relevant, and then you’re going to apply the italics and the bold, and notice how it makes it match. So, do that for all of these and make the two images match.

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, but let me leave you with this parting thought. If a picture is worth a thousand words, then sharing the Excel love is priceless.