Navigating Within the Workbook

Excel 2010 gives you a variety of ways to navigate through a sheet using the mouse and the keyboard. Before we go any further, let’s make some sample text. Please create a new excel sheet and fill it with whatever information you want. In the screenshot, we’ve included some sample data.

Moving with Mouse

You can switch the insertion point easily by clicking anywhere on the screen in your text. Sometimes, if the sheet is big, you can’t see where you want to go. In such cases, you will have to use the scroll bars seen in the following screenshot:

Rolling your mouse wheel, which is similar to pressing the up-arrow or down-arrow buttons in the scroll bar, will scroll your sheet.

Moving with Scroll Bars     

As seen in the above screenshot, there are two scroll bars: one for moving vertically within the sheet and moving horizontally. Using the vertical scroll bar, you can:

• Go up by one line by pressing the upward scroll arrow.
• Move down one line by pressing the scroll arrow at the bottom.
• Switch to the next tab using the next page button (footnote).
• Transfer a previous page using the previous page button (footnote).
• Use the Browse Object button to switch through the sheet from one selected object to the next.

Moving with Keyboard 

The arrow keys, mouse, Home, End, PageUp, PageDown, Ctrl + Home, and Ctrl + End keys, can be used to navigate between cells within the workbook.

Using the arrow keys to move around the workbook

• Click any cell or use the arrow keys to move between cells in a worksheet. When you move to a cell, that cell becomes the active cell.
• Press CTRL + RIGHT / LEFT ARROW to move to the beginning or end of the current line.
• Use the UP ARROW or DOWN ARROW key to scroll one line up or down.
• Use the LEFT ARROW or RIGHT ARROW key to scroll one column left or right.
• Press the PAGE UP or PAGE DOWN key one window (up to a screen) up or down.
• Press CTRL + LEFT ARROW or CTRL + RIGHT ARROW key to the left or right of a window.
• To move quickly through a large area of the workbook, press the SCROLL LOCK key and simultaneously press the CTRL + OK key.

Pressing one of the arrow keys while the SCROLL LOCK key will scroll one row down or up, or one column to the right or left. The SCROLL LOCK key must be off to use the arrow keys to move between cells.

Moving with Go To Command  

Press the F5 key to use the Go To command, which will show a dialog box where you will find different options to access a specific box.

Normally, we use row and column number, e.g. K5, and finally press the Go To button.