Moving Around and Selecting Cells

Once you enter information in your worksheet, you need to be able to navigate the worksheet and select the cells you want to use for various operations. Table 7-2 gives you a quick overview of the important keys for moving around on the worksheet.

Table 7-2: Keys for Navigating the Excel Worksheet
Press This Key	To Move Here
Enter	Next cell down
Tab	Next cell to the right
Shift+Tab	Next cell to the left
Any arrow key	One cell in the direction of the arrow
Home	Column A
Ctrl+Home	Cell A1
Ctrl+End	The last cell in your worksheet
Page Down	Down one screen
Page Up	Up one screen
Alt+Page Down	Right one screen
Alt+Page Up	Left one screen

Aha! ”Moving to Cells Quickly

Two quick ways to move to the cell you want: Click in the Name box, type the cell address or range name , and click Enter; or press F5 to display the Go To dialog box, type the destination cell or range, and then click OK.

Selecting Cells

After you get to where you re going on the worksheet, you need to know how to select cells. Here are some of the different ways in which you ll select the cells you want to work with:

To select a single cell, either click the cell or type the cell address (for example, B7) in the Name box in the left side of the Formula bar and press Enter. The highlight moves to that cell.
To select a range of cells, click the first cell and drag to the last cell in the block. The area highlights as you drag the mouse. When the range is the size you want, release the mouse button.

Lingo
A range is a group of selected cells. You use ranges when you work with multiple cells in formulas, copy and move operations, chart creation, and so on.
To select noncontiguous (that is, not touching) ranges or cells, select the first cell or range as just described. Then press and hold Ctrl while selecting subsequent cells or ranges. When you ve selected all the cells you want, release Ctrl and perform your task as needed.
To select the entire worksheet, press Ctrl+A. The entire area is highlighted.

Naming and Moving to Ranges

In some cases you may want to save the selected cells as a range that you use in common operations. For example, suppose that you often use the yearly sales figures for each salesperson (cells F5 to F20) in worksheets and reports that you create. You can name that range so that you can refer to it by name in other operations, and Excel will automatically know which cells you re referring to. To create a named range, follow these steps:

Highlight the area you want to name as a range.
Click the Name box on the Formula bar on the right side of the worksheet.

Type the name you want to assign to the range, and then press Enter.

Caution

Be sure to start range names with letters , and don t use spaces (use underscores to separate words instead). Otherwise, Excel won t know what to do with the name and will display an error box asking you to enter a valid name.

Now you can move right to that range by typing the range name in the Name box, or by clicking the Name box down arrow and selecting it from the displayed list.

Aha! ”Fast Range Names

If you prefer, you can press Ctrl+F3 to display the Define Names dialog box. Then simply type the name for the range, and click OK to save it.