Creating Selections

Summary: Want a really easy way to create a selection of a group of cells? Discover how to use the Extend key to make this task easier than ever. (This tip works with Microsoft Excel 97, Excel 2000, Excel 2002, Excel 2003, and Excel 2007.)

Having survived the DOS era I find myself reluctant to give up keyboarding, and one of my favorite keyboard functions in Excel is the F8 Extend key.

By moving the cell pointer to the starting cell, you can press F8 to enable Extend (indicated on the status bar by the letters EXT or Extend Selection). Using the mouse, you can click on the final cell of a contiguous range to extend the selection highlight. All keyboard cursor keys can also be used to extend the selection.

For extremely large ranges you can do the following:

Move the cell pointer to the starting cell.
Press F8 to activate extend.
Press F5 to activate Go To. (Click here to see a related figure.)
Enter the ending cell address.
Press Enter or click OK to extend the selection.

For non-contiguous ranges the key combination of Shift+F8 turns on Add. Using the mouse you can click and drag each required block of ranges.

To cancel either Extend or Add press the Esc key or press F8 or Shift+F8 again.

ExcelTips is your source for cost-effective Microsoft Excel training. This tip (2099) applies to Microsoft Excel versions: 97 | 2000 | 2002 | 2003 | 2007

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Creating Selections