Excel shortcuts practice that does not let you cheat with the mouse
Most Excel shortcut lists are exactly that: a list. You read it, you print it, you tape it next to the monitor, and a month later you are still clicking the Bold button. Shortcutdrill was built around one rule: the only way through a drill is the shortcut, pressed on a live sheet, within a limit on key presses.
You can reach any cell with the arrow keys, and that is the problem. Nine arrow presses where Ctrl+Down does it in one does not count. The limit makes sure you learn the one key press that does the job, and a sprint of ten random drills against the clock makes sure it sticks.
Learn Excel keyboard shortcuts on a live sheet, in your browser
The drills run on a small sheet in your browser that responds to the same keys as Excel. Ctrl+Arrow jumps stop at the edge of the data, Shift extends the selection, Ctrl+D fills down and moves the references, Alt+= finds the numbers above and sums them. What you practice here works the same way in Excel, and most of it in Google Sheets.
There is nothing to install and no account needed to start. Progress and best times are saved in your browser, and a free account keeps them across devices.
The Excel shortcuts you actually need, in five groups
The 38 drills are organized into groups, and each group only adds a handful of keys on top of what you already know.
- Moving around: jump to the bottom, to the last column, back to the top, back up to the header, to the start of the row, find where the data stops and where the gaps are.
- Selecting: a column of numbers, across a row, a whole row, a whole column, the whole table, to the last cell, back to A1, to the start of the row.
- Formatting: bold the header row, italic for a note, underline a heading, currency, thousands separators, percentages, dates showing as numbers, clearing a number format.
- Editing: a total in one key press, totals across a row, undo, copy a formula down, copy a total across, today's date, clear a column, delete a duplicate row, insert a row, move a note, turn on filters.
- Putting it together: copy the headers further down, totals for two columns, tidy the report, remove a row and add a total, each chaining several shortcuts.
Within a group the drills get harder one notch at a time. By the end of Editing you have added a total with Alt+=, filled a formula down with Ctrl+D and inserted a row without touching the mouse, not because you read a list, but because the drill would not pass until you did.
Open the drill list
Excel shortcuts for Mac, with the right keys
Switch the keys to Mac and every drill shows the Mac version. Command works wherever a drill says Ctrl, and the sheet checks the Mac combination, not a translation. For number formats the drills use Control, because Command+Shift+4 takes a screenshot on a Mac, which is the kind of detail a printed list never mentions.
If you move between a Windows machine at work and a Mac at home, run the same drill in both modes and the two sets of keys stop fighting each other.
Why a key-press limit beats a shortcut list
Reading a shortcut and pressing it are different skills. You can know that Ctrl+Shift+Down selects to the end of the column and still reach for the mouse, because the mouse is what your hand does when it is not thinking. The limit removes the option. Every drill states how many key presses it should take, and the sheet counts.
After a few repetitions the shortcut is what your hand does when it is not thinking, which is the whole point.
Sprints: ten drills against the clock
Once the drills pass one at a time, a sprint runs ten of them back to back against the clock. Your best sprint is kept, so you can see yourself get faster from week to week. Free users sprint over the free drills; Pro sprints across all 38.
Sprints are the closest thing to real work: a task, then another, then another, with no time to look anything up.
Try a sprint
Excel shortcuts test practice for assessments and new jobs
Finance, accounting and analyst assessments often watch how you move around a workbook as much as what you type into it, and some banks and consultancies make keyboard-only Excel a formal part of training. The shortcuts tested are not exotic: jumps, selections, AutoSum, fill down, formats, insert and delete.
Run through all five groups the week before an assessment, then a few sprints, and the keyboard part of the test takes care of itself.
Excel shortcut training for beginners and for daily users
If you have never used a shortcut beyond Ctrl+C, Moving around starts with jumping to the bottom of a column and does not assume anything. If you already use Excel every day, skip to Editing or Putting it together and look for the gaps: most experienced users have three or four actions they still do with the mouse, and the key-press limit finds them in minutes.
Every drill is independent, so you can jump to the one you keep doing the slow way and come back to the rest later.
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