Jumping to the Start of the Next Data Entry Row

by Allen Wyatt (last updated June 18, 2016)

Please Note: This article is written for users of the following Microsoft Excel versions: 97, 2000, 2002, and 2003. If you are using a later version (Excel 2007 or later), this tip may not work for you. For a version of this tip written specifically for later versions of Excel, click here: Jumping to the Start of the Next Data Entry Row.

Do you need to always jump to the first cell right after all the data you've already put in your worksheet? For instance, if you have a worksheet that contains data in A1:G251, do you ever need to jump to cell A252 so that you can start entering data?

Moving to the first cell in row 252 is easy, provided there is data in all the cells in A1:A251. But if there can be empty cells in column A, then jumping to A252 can be a bit more difficult. In that case, you might be interested in a macro that makes jumping to the first cell of the empty row after your data quite easy:

Sub FindFirstCellNextRow()
    Dim x As Integer
    x = ActiveSheet.UsedRange.Rows.Count
    ActiveCell.SpecialCells(xlLastCell).Select
    ActiveCell.EntireRow.Cells(1, 1).Offset(1, 0).Activate
End Sub

The first two lines effectively recompute the "last cell" in the worksheet and then the next two lines select that cell and jump to the cell in column A that is one row down.

Assign the macro to a keyboard shortcut, and you'll always be just one keystroke away from jumping to the first truly empty row in the worksheet.

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