Navigating in Excel

Your mouse and arrow keys are the primary navigation keys for moving from cell to cell. Unlike Word, which uses an insertion point, Excel uses a cell pointer to show you the currently active cell. The active cell has a darkened border around it and accepts whatever data you enter next . As you press an arrow key, Excel moves the cell pointer in the direction of the arrow to a new cell, making the new cell the active one.

If you work with a rather large worksheet, you might find the Go To command useful. Press F5 to display the Go To dialog box, where you can select a range of cells that you might have previously named or type a cell reference value such as C141 to jump to that cell.

Table 6.1 lists the most commonly used navigational keystrokes within Excel. Use your mouse to scroll with the scrollbars. To scroll long distances, press Shift while you scroll with the mouse.

Table 6.1. Using the Keyboard to Navigate Excel

Press This Key	To Move To
Arrow keys	The direction of the arrow one cell at a time
Ctrl+up arrow, Ctrl+down arrow	The topmost or bottommost cell that contains data or, if at the end of the range already, the next cell that contains data
Ctrl+left arrow, Ctrl+right arrow	The leftmost or rightmost cell that contains data or, if at the end of the range already, the next cell that contains data
PageUp, PageDown	The previous or next screen of the worksheet
Ctrl+Home	The upper-left corner of the worksheet cell A1
End, arrow	The last blank cell in the arrow's direction
Ctrl+PageUp, Ctrl+PageDown	The next or previous worksheet within the current workbook