Accessing the Ribbon by using your keyboard
At first glance, you may think that the Ribbon is completely mouse centric. After all, the
commands don’t display the traditional underlined letter to indicate the Alt+keystrokes.
But in fact, the Ribbon is very keyboard friendly. The trick is to press the Alt key to display
the pop-up key tips. Each Ribbon control has a letter (or series of letters) that you type to
issue the command.
how the Home tab looks after I press the Alt key to display the key tips
and then the H key to display the key tips for the Home tab. If you press one of the key tips,
the screen then displays more key tips. For example, to use the keyboard to align the cell
contents to the left, press Alt, followed by H (for Home), and then AL (for Align Left).
Pressing Alt displays the key tips.
After you press Alt, you can also use the left- and right-arrow keys to scroll through the
tabs. When you reach the proper tab, press the down arrow to enter the Ribbon. Then use
left- and right-arrow keys to scroll through the Ribbon commands. When you reach the
command you need, press Enter to execute it. This method isn’t as efficient as using the
key tips, but it’s a quick way to take a look at the commands available.
Using Shortcut Menus
In addition to the Ribbon, Excel features many shortcut menus, which you access by rightclicking just about anything within Excel. Shortcut menus don’t contain every relevant
command, just those that are most commonly used for whatever is selected.
the shortcut menu that appears when you right-click a
cell. The shortcut menu appears at the mouse-pointer position, which makes selecting a
command fast and effi cient. The shortcut menu that appears depends on what you’re doing
at the time. For example, if you’re working with a chart, the shortcut menu contains commands that are pertinent to the selected chart element.
Click the right mouse button to display a shortcut menu of commands you’re most likely
to use.
The box above the shortcut menu — the Mini toolbar — contains commonly used tools
from the Home tab. The Mini toolbar was designed to reduce the distance your mouse has
to travel around the screen. Just right-click, and common formatting tools are within an
inch of your mouse pointer. The Mini toolbar is particularly useful when a tab other than
Home is displayed. If you use a tool on the Mini toolbar, the toolbar remains displayed in
case you want to perform other formatting on the selection.
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