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 allows you to configure what happens when you press Enter in a cell. This change, which controls the direction in which the following cell is selected, is applicable to all instances of Excel you use from that time forward. You may want to vary, on a workbook by workbook basis, how the Enter key behaves. This tip explains how this can be done.

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

Jumping to a Range
You can name various ranges of cells in your worksheet, which is very handy when you are putting together formulas. Excel knows that you may also want to jump to and select a named range, so it provides two quick and easy ways to accomplish the task.

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
The arrow keys should allow you to navigate around a worksheet, selecting different cells. If your arrow keys don't work this way, it could be because of your Scroll Lock key, as described in this tip.

Removing Cells from a Selected Range
Selecting a large range of cells is easy; unselecting some of the cells in that range is not so easy. In fact, there is no click or shortcut you can use to unselect cells in the range. Instead, you must turn to a macro or a third-party solution, as described in this tip.

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.