Page 63 - Excel Timesaving Techniques for Dummies

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Technique 9: Navigating the Worksheet in a Snap
Going Direct When I press Ctrl+↓, the cell pointer just jumps
down three rows to cell A5, the first occupied cell
below it (see Figure 9-2).
As even the most novice of Excel users is well aware,
a worksheet covers an awfully big area of which only
the smallest bit is ever displayed on-screen at any
one time. Many times when making editing changes
to a particularly large worksheet or in an especially
complex workbook (that is, whose data is flung
across several worksheets), you have to move
directly to the place you need to go. This can involve
moving from one end of a table or list of data to the
other, from one cell range to the next, or even from
one sheet to the next. Scrolling through the columns
and rows of any given sheet or clicking sheet tab
after sheet tab to find your place in these kinds of
spreadsheets is just plain inefficient.

Leaping through data ranges and
hopping over blanks • Figure 9-1: Starting in the cell pointer in blank cell A2
and moving downward by pressing Ctrl+↓.
This first procedure enables you to

Leap from end to end in a long table or list of
data.
Hop from the end of one occupied cell range to
the next over all the blanks in between.

How this works is that if the cell pointer is located
on a blank cell and you hold down Ctrl as you press
an arrow key, the cell pointer jumps to the next cell
in the direction of the arrow key that contains any
type of entry. (You can also do this by pressing the
End key and an arrow key — the only difference here
is that you have to release the End key before you
press Enter.) Alternately, if the cell pointer is located
on a cell that has some sort of entry and you press
Ctrl plus an arrow key (or End, arrow key), the cell
pointer jumps in the direction of the arrow to the • Figure 9-2: The cell pointer jumps down to A5 — the first
occupied cell after the blanks in that column.
last cell containing an entry followed by a blank cell.
Figures 9-1 through 9-4 illustrate this kind of blank- However, when I press Ctrl+↓ a second time (see
to-occupied, occupied-to-occupied leapfrogging. In Figure 9-3), the program jumps the cell pointer down
Figure 9-1, the cell pointer is in cell A2, a blank cell. to cell A9 because this is the last occupied cell