Worksheet and Cells ( PDF Version )

An Excel worksheet is potentially a very big table that can reach 1,048,576 rows by 16,384 columns (for Excel 365). Each entry in the table is called a “cell” and is identified uniquely by its row and column.

Therefore the "reference" (or "coordinates") of a cell is composed of a letter and a number that point to their unique position in the grid (e.g. A1, C12...).

Before you enter information in a cell, you must be positioned on it. That is you must select the cell before you type any information in it, to make it the "active cell". To select a cell, you can use the mouse to click on the cell or you can move from the current active cell to another cell using the keyboard.

If the cell that you want to access is visible on the screen, you can select it quickly using the mouse, of course, but if the cell you want to select is several screen higher, lower or on the side, you will need to click on the "vertical scrollbar" (to move up or down in the table) or on "horizontal scrollbar" (to move right or left in the table). This may be time consuming. In such a case, you can use the keyboard to go from one cell to the other, or move up or down one page, or left or right one page. The table below will give you a summary of the keyboard shortcuts.

In very large spreadsheets, when you want to go from one cell to another cell which is very far, using the mouse or the keyboard may not be very practical. In such cases, you could use the "Name Box" (on the left of the formula bar). You type in that box the reference (or coordinates) of cell you want to go to, for example: "G250". Excel will take you directly to the cell on column G and row 250.

Note also that when you enter data in a cell and press the "Enter" key, Excel will go directly to the cell below and make it the active cell. Excel assumes that it is the most probable cell that you want to use next (writing a list, for example). If you press the TAB key instead, Excel will consider that you are entering data horizontally, so it will go to the next cell on the right and make it the active cell.

Moving around the worksheet using the “Navigation Keypad”

Keys to Press Corresponding move
PAGE DOWN Move down one screen
PAGE UP Move up one screen
ALT+PAGE DOWN Move one screen to the right
ALT+PAGE UP Move one screen to the left
CTRL+HOME Move to the beginning of the worksheet
CTRL+END Move to the last cell on the worksheet (intersection of the rightmost used column and the bottom most used row)
CTRL+PAGE DOWN Move to the next sheet in the workbook
CTRL+PAGE UP Move to the previous sheet in the workbook
CTRL+TAB Move to the next workbook or window