Keyboard shortcuts?

[Matthew Benham]

I spent years learning the windows keyboard shortcuts for excel, but find
that most of them don't work on the Mac version. Any way to get this great
program to work the way it should? For example F2 should be calculate, F4
should be redo, Alt-E-S-T should be Paste Special Formats...

Thanks,
Matthew

 

[J.E. McGimpsey]

I spent years learning the windows keyboard shortcuts for excel, but find
that most of them don't work on the Mac version. Any way to get this great
program to work the way it should? For example F2 should be calculate, F4
should be redo, Alt-E-S-T should be Paste Special Formats...

I don't know about "the way it should" - Excel started out on the
Mac and got thoroughly mucked up when it was ported to Windows, so
I'm partial to the Mac keyboard shortcuts.

OSX reserves some keyboard shortcuts, but, in XLv.X you can
customize the rest to your heart's content:

Choose Tools/Customize/Toolbars and click Keyboard. Find your
command and enter a new keyboard shortcut.

Note that Alt/Option doesn't have the same effect on Mac as it does
with windows - i.e., it doesn't allow stringing together keys in a
sequence, all keyboard shortcuts must be a combination of modifier
keys and one alphanumeric/punctuation.

 

[richard goldfarb]

I had the same issues. One reply said to just reset the
keys to execute any "command" you want. However, one of
the most often used keys that I use ALL THE TIME on Excel
for Windows is the F2-EDIT key to edit the formula in the
current cell without having to use the mouse to click on
the formula bar. But as a testament to how lousy Excel V
X for the Mac is, there is no such "command" in Excel and
no way to set it the F2 key to Edit as in Windows.

 

[J.E. McGimpsey]

I had the same issues. One reply said to just reset the
keys to execute any "command" you want. However, one of
the most often used keys that I use ALL THE TIME on Excel
for Windows is the F2-EDIT key to edit the formula in the
current cell without having to use the mouse to click on
the formula bar. But as a testament to how lousy Excel V
X for the Mac is, there is no such "command" in Excel and
no way to set it the F2 key to Edit as in Windows.

Wrong on both counts...

To Edit a cell in XLv.X (and 98 and 2001, IIRC): CTRL-U

This can be found by looking in XL Help under "keyboard shortcuts",
and selecting the "Keys for entering data" topic.

To remap F2 takes a bit of VBA, but it's easily done.

If you don't have a Personal Macro Workbook (PMW) started yet,
choose Tools/Macro/Record new macro, choose PMW from the location
dropdown and record something - selecting cells, etc. - the click
the stop button.

Type Opt-F11 to enter the Visual Basic Editor. Select the Personal
Macro Workbook item from the Project Browser window. Double click it
to see a folder marked "Microsoft Excel Objects". Open that folder
and double click the ThisWorkbooks icon, which opens up the
ThisWorkbooks Code module. Paste the following into that window:

Private Sub Workbooks_Open()
Application.OnKey "{F2}", "F2Edit"
End Sub

Choose Insert/Module and paste this into the window that opens.

Public Sub F2Edit()
CommandBars.FindControl(Id:=6034).Execute
Application.OnKey "{F2}", "F2Edit"
End Sub

Save PMW (File/Save PMW) and type Opt-F11 to return to XL.

Quit XL and restart - F2 will now work to enter edit mode.