Moving and Selecting Rows

James asked if there is a keyboard shortcut to move down a row and select the entire row. In Excel there is no way to do this with a single keystroke, but there is a way to do it using two keystrokes. All you need to do is press the Down Arrow, immediately followed by pressing Shift+Space Bar.

If you do a lot of this type of moving about, however, you would probably be more interested in a macro that combines the two steps into a single step that can be initiated by a shortcut key. The following macro will work:

Sub SelectRowDown1()
    If ActiveCell.Row < 65536 Then
        ActiveCell.Offset(1, 0).Select
        ActiveCell.EntireRow.Select
    End If
End Sub

If you assign this to a shortcut key, such as Ctrl+D, then every time you press the shortcut key, you move down a row and it is selected. The problem with this approach, however, is that after the macro has been run, the first cell in the row is always the active cell. This is different than if you use the Down Arrow, Shift+Space Bar method of moving and selecting.

It is apparently the EntireRow.Select method that results in the first cell being activated. To get around this problem, all you need to do is determine which column you were in, and then activate that cell. The following version of the macro does just that:

Sub SelectRowDown2()
    If ActiveCell.Row < 65536 Then
        ActiveCell.Offset(1, 0).Select
        iCP = ActiveCell.Column
        ActiveCell.EntireRow.Select
        ActiveCell.Offset(0, iCP - 1).Activate
    End If
End Sub

If you are interested in a macro that moves up, you can use this macro:

Sub SelectRowUp()
    If ActiveCell.Row > 1 Then
        ActiveCell.Offset(-1, 0).Select
        iCP = ActiveCell.Column
        ActiveCell.EntireRow.Select
        ActiveCell.Offset(0, iCP - 1).Activate
    End If
End Sub

You can assign this macro to the Ctrl+U shortcut key, and then your movement macros will be complete.

If you need something that is more "high powered" than these macros, check out the RowLiner add-in from Pearson Software Consulting Services:

http://www.cpearson.com/excel/RowLiner.htm

ExcelTips is your source for cost-effective Microsoft Excel training. This tip (2106) applies to Microsoft Excel 97, 2000, 2002, and 2003. You can find a version of this tip for the ribbon interface of Excel (Excel 2007 and later) here: Moving and Selecting Rows.