Navigation

Tips, Tricks, and Answers

The following articles are available for the 'Navigation' topic. Click the article's title (shown in bold) to see the associated article.

Choosing Direction After Enter On a Workbook Basis
Excel lets you specify how it should behave when you press Enter. If you change this behavior, Excel assumes you want it changed for all workbooks on which you might be working. Here's how to adjust it so that the behavior can vary based on which workbook you are using.

Finding the End of the Worksheet
Understanding how to get to the end of the Excel worksheet.

Jumping to a Range
Need a quick way to jump to a particular part of your worksheet? You can do it by using the Go To dialog box.

Jumping To a Specific Page
Want to jump to a specific printed page within a worksheet? It's not as easy as you might think, but here's some techniques you can use.

Jumping to a Specific Worksheet
When you've got a workbook that has a huge number of worksheets in it, jumping to a specific worksheet can be a challenge. Excel provides some tools to select from a large number of worksheets, but you can also create your own tool that will do the job even better.

Jumping to the Real Last Cell
Jumping to the last cell in a worksheet should be easy, but you may not always get the results that you expect. This tip looks at why this could be the case and how you can get around the problem.

Limiting Scroll Area
If you need to limit the cells that are accessible by the user of a worksheet, VBA can come to the rescue. This doesn't involve the use of macros, but the setting of properties.

Odd Arrow Key Behavior
Press the up or down arrow keys, and you expect Excel to change which cell is selected. If this doesn't occur on your worksheet, it could be due to a simple inadvertent keypress on the keyboard.

Removing Cells from a Selected Range
Select a large range of cells and you may later want to remove a few cells from that selection. This is not as easy as you might expect. Here's how to unselect those cells you don't want in the selection.

Scrolling Up and Down
Moving through the spreadsheet with a mouse.

Selecting a Column
Two easy ways to select an entire column in Excel.

Selecting a Row
Two ways to select an entire row in Excel.

Simultaneous Scrolling
If you have two worksheets displayed at the same time, you might want those worksheets to remain visually "in sync" with each other. Here's a couple of small macros you can use to scroll the worksheets simultaneously.

Tab Key Jumps a Screen at a Time
Have you ever pressed the Tab key, expecting to move to the next cell in your worksheet, only to have Excel completely change what you see on the screen? This could be due to a setting deep inside Excel related to transitioning from other spreadsheet programs.

Tab Key Won't Move from Cell to Cell in Locked Worksheet
Normally the Tab key can be used to move from one cell to another in Excel. If this cell movement doesn't work for you, it could be because of the way you have the program configured.

Using Go To to Jump to a Chart Sheet
Using Go To with a cell reference on a different worksheet is a great way of jumping somewhere. Using Go To with a chart sheet is impossible, however, because there are no cells on the sheet to reference. There are workarounds, however, as described in this tip.

Weird Mouse Shortcut
If you like to use the mouse in your worksheet navigation efforts, you'll want to pay attention to this tip. Here you discover a way you can navigate using the mouse and the borders of the selected cell.