Hello there. In this current series of short It is my focus will be more on formatting tricks with respect to shortcut keys. I'm not going to burden with you loads and loads of shortcut key, in fact very selective but the ones which I'll be using along with you are the ones which you must remember and start using. And you will soon find out why. Well, in this case, often it happens that you right click and go to Format Cells. Correct.

Now, instead of doing that, you as well, might as well use Ctrl digit one control and one will prompt you with this Format Cells dialog box, which otherwise you would have got by clicking on Format Cells separately. Now just a word of caution while using the shortcut key. Use the digit one from this series of digits on your keyboard, not the one which are present on the num keypad. If you press control and digit one from this num keypad, it will not work. Next, if you are working with a date and you wish to get today's data on a single cell, you click on a cell and then press Ctrl semi colon, it quickly gives today's date which in this case happens to be second of February 2014. Let me press enter and there you go.

You have today's date. Not only that, this is a format you may approve a format which says to fpb 2014 in which case if you keep the cell selected and press Ctrl, Shift digit three Ctrl Shift and three, it quickly changes that in what format DD Mmm, why, why format. So combination of these two shortcut keys are used quite often to give a date today's date and then making sure the format is the one which I desire which looks good on the printout. Next, if you are working with a series of numbers, let's say I'm putting some numbers there you go. And you wish to apply comma style which we do using this million separator. So what you might as well do in as an alternative is press all key press the H Key from the keyboard, so as to activate the Home tab.

And once you do that, notice the letter key is the one which is indicated by the comma style. So I press escape. And there you go all the numbers in million separator. Not only that, if you wish to reduce the decimals, then do what old letter H. Then notice the digit nine is the one which is indicating decrease decimals. So I press nine. So all h nine once again, it shows me a whole number with no decimals.

So there you go. This is the same shortcut key which I was speaking about in the in one of the initial videos where I explained you the benefits of using alt and then following the key tips. Apart from this, a couple of miscellaneous shortcut keys are if you press Ctrl F, it quickly gives you the print preview and a lot of us while working with Excel before seeing a printout would like to use this shortcut key Ctrl f1 if I press Ctrl f1 it quickly hides the ribbon if I press Ctrl f1 again, it quickly bring Sit back. Apart from using shortcut key, you can also double click on any tab, it hides the ribbon and double click again, it bring back the ribbon. So this is if you want to increase your working area and want to see more numbers without getting interfered while the ribbon is still on.

Finally, let me talk about a short copy, which I have been using a lot in data cleaning and formatting all semi cool. Now what does it do? Let me go to sample data where I will show you the benefits of the shocker key. Let's assume Jan till June, you have a very simple list of months, I'm going to hide two particular rows. So I say hi. And I choose the entire block.

I just want to color those cells which are visible to me right now. So what do I do? I select the cells I go to home and then I pick up the color. Well, if I now unhide the rows which I had hidden, notice the cells which were hidden also got colored so what are the alternatives before me well Bring back the data, I will hide it again. Then let me choose the entire block and I will press the shortcut key which is mentioned on top this is called all semi colon. The benefit is it only chooses cells which are currently visible.

And then if you apply the color yellow, as I unhide the remaining rows back, notice the color doesn't get applied to the cells which were hidden or semi colon for choosing visible cells. Practice all this and trust me, as you work with Excel more and more, these shortcut keys are going to save a lot of time.