Page 64 - Excel Timesaving Techniques for Dummies

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Going Direct
before the blank cell in A10. When I press Ctrl+↓ In navigating the sample worksheet shown in 49
again, Excel jumps the cell pointer down to cell A16 Figures 9-1 through 9-4, I could go on in this
(see Figure 9-4), the first occupied cell after the manner — leaping from one occupied cell to the
blanks in that column. next and hopping over all the blanks in between.

Of course, if you happen to be in the very last occu-
pied cell in a particular column or row and then use
the Ctrl+arrow key combination again, Excel jumps
to the very last worksheet cell in that direction in
that column or row (that is, column IV when you
press Ctrl+→, column A when you press Ctrl+←, row
65536 when you press Ctrl+↓, and row 1 when you
press Ctrl+↑).

Before inserting new rows or columns in a
worksheet with which you’re not totally famil-
iar, press Ctrl plus the appropriate arrow key
to make sure that no hidden data ranges will
be split by your insertion. If the cell pointer
shoots to the very first or last column or row
of the sheet, you know the way is clear.
• Figure 9-3: Pressing Ctrl+↓ again moves the cell pointer
down to A9 — the first occupied cell before a
blank. Going right to the last cell in a sheet
When you’re building a new spreadsheet that has
only one table in it, you can use the keystroke short-
cut Ctrl+End to zip right to the last cell in the sheet.
This keystroke shortcut jumps you right to the end
of the occupied regions in your worksheet, enabling
you to identify open areas in the sheet where you
can build new tables and lists of data.
Understand, however, that the last cell of a work-
sheet can be, and often is, itself blank. This is
because Excel defines the last cell in any given work-
sheet as the one that lies at the intersection of the
last occupied row and column and considers a row
or column to be occupied if any of its cells have data
in them.
As Figure 9-5 illustrates, the last cell of the sheet is
• Figure 9-4: Pressing Ctrl+↓ again moves the cell pointer blank whenever you’ve made any entries in the last
down to A16 — the first occupied cell after
occupied column even when your data entries don’t
the blanks.