We like keyboard shortcuts because any time you don’t have to leave the keyboard to grab the mouse, you’ll be more productive. In the past we’ve featured Microsoft Teams keyboard shortcuts, Microsoft Word keyboard shortcuts, Windows Key shortcuts, handy run commands, Outlook shortcuts, Excel keyboard shortcuts, plain text paste shortcuts, some new zoom and paste shortcuts in Word, Teams Slash commands, and even Foreign Character shortcuts. Microsoft has a large list of Excel keyboard shortcuts, but today we’re going to focus on one that will come in handy because of its versatility: The F4 key.
First off, if you’re using a laptop or a keyboard with multimedia buttons, the F4 key may be remapped to something else by default (one of my keyboards is the “Mute” function, one of them is the “Home” function). So you might have to use the Function (usually labeled “Fn”) button on your keyboard to access the proper F4 button. Or you can be like me and use Dell Peripheral Manager or PowerToys’ Keyboard Manager to remap the keys to be normal function keys all the time).
The nice thing about the F4 key is that it does a variety of handy things. Here’s a guide:
- Repeat Last Action: Pressing F4 once will repeat the last action single you completed. So if you, say, changed a cell’s color, you can then select another cell, press F4, and it will apply the last action (in this case, changing its color).
- Toggle Absolute/Relative References: What are absolute and relative references? You can read all about them on Microsoft’s site, but basically, a relative reference is a reference relative to the location of the cell you’re working in, while an absolute reference is a reference that is referencing a specific cell. Typically you’d put dollar signs ($) in front of your cell reference (in front of the row or cell number) to make the cell an absolute reference to a specific cell. But if you’re editing a formula, you can just hit F4 to add that dollar sign for you, cycling through the various absolute reference options: column absolute while row relative, row absolute while column relative, then completely relative reference.
- Find Next/Previous Cells: By combining the shift key with the F4 button, you can use it to find your next cell in your search results. So if you’re searching for a specific value or text in workbook, or whatever qualifiers (values, formatting, etc.) were last entered into the Find and Replace Window (hit Ctrl-F to search), you can then press Shift-F4 to find the next result. If you want to find the previous result, press Ctrl-Shift-F4. This means you can close the search window and still browse your results and not have to click on the “Find Next” button.
- Close the Sheet or Close Excel: This is actually a keyboard shortcut that will work in most other programs as well. If you press Ctrl-F4, it will close your active worksheet or document. If you hit Alt-F4, it will close the program entirely and all the documents that are open.
As you can see, the F4 button is quite powerful in Excel and can save you a bunch of time.
What’s your favorite Excel timesaver? Comment below and we’ll see if we can get it featured in a future article.