In order to choose buttons from the ribbon, we would normally use our mouse. However, you don't need to do this. You can use keyboard shortcuts instead. When you use keyboard shortcuts, letters appear on the screen and they're called accelerator keys. And every tab and command in Excel can be accessed with these accelerator keys. Let's look at an example. Here we want to choose the font size, and I start by pressing the alt button that gives you access to the ribbon. And I see lots of letters appear on the screen. These are your accelerator keys. H would appear over the home ribbon, so I press H, and then FS would appear on top of the font size. So if I press alt H F S, I'd get access to the font size and then can change it.
However, what if I make a mistake? Well, pressing the escape key allows me to go back a step. So imagine if I press Alt N and then, oh no, I meant to press H to go to the home ribbon. So I'll press the escape key to go back up one level of the letters. The H would then appear, so I'd press H instead. Then FS would appear and I could then press FS. To change the font size, there are hundreds of things in the ribbon, which means potentially hundreds of shortcuts. But remember, Excel shows you the accelerator keys, so there's no need to remember them. Here I can see H appearing above the home ribbon. Let's look at an example in Excel looking at the word march. In cell B four, I want to change the font size. So I start by pressing the alt button and the letter H appears underneath the home ribbon. Now, I know font size is on the home ribbon, so I'm going to press H, and then FS appears above the font size. So I press Fs and I can now type in the font size that I want. Say I want 14, press enter, and that has been changed.
If I were trying to do that and I pressed the wrong key, so maybe I pressed alt and then N by mistake, that has brought me to the insert ribbon, which is not what I want. I want to change the font size, and I know that that's in the home ribbon. So all I need to do is press escape. That will take Me back up one level of letters, and I can now press H to access the home ribbon, and then FS to change the font size, and maybe I want to change it back to 11. Press enter and that is done. There are loads more accelerator keys you can use. So if you find yourself with a little bit of time, why not investigate just a couple of the buttons that you use all the time? Maybe you could memorize the accelerator keys just for those that you use, and you will soon find yourself getting faster in Excel.
