If you have ever worked in Excel 2003 or earlier, Alt+F would open the File menu. And Alt+W will open the Window menu. Where as, in Excel 2007, these keystroke combinations do not show the Office 2003 keyboard shortcut window. Instead, Alt+F opens the Office Icon menu and Alt+W opens the View ribbon.
This article describes what Key Tips are and how you can use them to access the ribbon. It also lists CTRL combination shortcut keys, function keys, and some other common shortcut keys for Microsoft Excel.
Will my old shortcuts still work?
Keyboard shortcuts that begin with CTRL will still work in Excel 2010. For example, CTRL+C still copies to the clipboard, and CTRL+V still pastes from the clipboard.
Most of the old ALT+ menu shortcuts still work, too. However, you need to know the full shortcut from memory, there are no screen reminders of what letters to press. For example, try pressing ALT, and then press one of the old menu keys E (Edit), V (View), I (Insert), and so on.
A box pops up saying you're using an access key from an earlier version of Microsoft Office. If you know the entire key sequence, go ahead and initiate the command. If you don't know the sequence, press ESC and use Key Tip badges instead.
Note: If you are using Microsoft Excel Starter 2010, be aware that not all the features listed for Excel are supported in Excel Starter 2010.
Many of the keyboard shortcuts in the Office Icon menu match the same shortcuts as in the File menu.
Figure: Alt+F opens the Office Icon menu.
Thus, Alt+F+S was File – Save in Excel 2003, and this combination still executes a Save in Excel 2007.
Alt+F+D+A in Excel 2003 was File – Send to – Mail Recipient as Attachment. In Excel 2007, Alt+F+D still gets you to the Send menu, but now E is used to send a fi le as an e-mail attachment and A is used to send a fi le as an XPS attachment (Microsoft’s new open source fi le format meant to compete with Adobe PDF).
Figure: Some of the old keystrokes don’t quite work. If you had memorized Alt+F+D+A, it is now Alt+F+D+E.
Pressing Alt+W in Excel 2003 opened the Window menu. The commands on the old Window menu were New Window, Arrange, Compare Side by Side, Hide, Unhide, Split, and Freeze Panes.
Pressing Alt+W in Excel 2007 opens the View ribbon. All of the keyboard shortcuts (N, A, B, H, U, S, and F) perform identical actions in Excel 2007.
Figure: All of the Alt+W shortcuts from Excel 2003 still work.
Note: In Excel 2003, Alt+W+2 would switch to the next open workbook. To do this in Excel 2007, use Ctrl+Tab.