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A new function key for Excel (and some good older ones)
Microsoft have sneaked in a new short-cut key to invoke the Power Query Editor, but in the course of researching this we also unearthed 4 other key combinations which we suspect even diehard Excel users may not know about.

Posted by Andy Brown on 01 February 2023

In this blog

A quick route to Power Query
Putting a border round selected cells
Showing worksheet statistics
Expanding the formula bar
Copying a value into the formula bar

A new function key for Excel (and some good older ones)

The problem with researching blogs is this: you get distracted! This was meant to be about one new function key introduced into Excel recently, but then I found 4 others which I liked but never knew about, and can't resist mentioning too.

A quick route to Power Query

Want to get into the Power Query Editor from Excel to choose how to extract, transform and load your data? You should!

Many people don't realise that you can use this just as easily within Excel as within Power BI Desktop.

One way is to choose this option, then double-click on one of the queries listed:

One way into Query Editor.

However, there's now an easier way: just press Alt + F12.

If for some reason this doesn't work on your computer, it may be because you haven't got the latest Excel 365 upgrade yet - in which case you'll just have to wait, sadly!

Putting a border round selected cells

This is something I often want to do, but I never realised there was a short-cut key for it!

To apply an outline border like this to selected cells, just press Shift + Ctrl + &.

Showing worksheet statistics

I have a terrible confession - I didn't even know that you could show these:

You can bring up a dialog box showing some summary statistics about your workbook.

And I certainly didn't know that you could press Shift + Ctrl + G to display this information!

Expanding the formula bar

You can click and drag as shown to change the height of the Excel formula bar:

You can drag the double-headed arrow shown to give yourself more wiggle room when entering formulae.

This is particularly useful when you press Alt + Enter to add a new line to your formula. But did you know that you can toggle the size of the formula bar by pressing Shift + Ctrl + U?