Selecting Cells, Ranges, Rows, and Columns

Selecting Cells, Ranges, Rows, and Columns.

1. Selections tell Excel which cells you want to work on—whether you're typing content into them, creating a formula or using a function, applying formatting, or cutting or copying content from one place to another.

2. Selections can be a single cell, a block of cells, one or more columns, or one or more rows. Selections can be contiguous or not, it's all a matter of how you make the selection.

3. To select a single cell, just click in it. You'll see its address in the Name box in the upper right. As you can see, I've clicked in cell C11.

4. To select a range of cells, just click in the first one you want to include, and with the left mouse button pressed, drag through the adjacent cells. Notice that the first cell in the range stays white. That doesn’t mean it’s not part of the selection.

5. You can also click in a cell and then use the Shift key, clicking in the last cell in the desired range. For example, I can select all of the cells for the California cities in this list by clicking in cell B5 and then pressing Shift and clicking in cell E11.

6. You can use the Shift and arrow keys on your keyboard to select cells, too. I've clicked in cell B12 and then using the Shift and the right and down arrow keys, I selected all the rows for Florida cities, through cell E16.

7. To select an entire row, click the row number, and all the cells in that row, all 16,384 of them, are selected.

8. To select an entire column, click the column letter, and all 1,048,576 cells in that column are selected.

9. That means, by the way, that there are more than 17 billion cells in each worksheet—and to select all of them? Click the button at the intersection of the column letters and row numbers, or press CTRL + A. And again, notice that the cell I was in when I pressed the keyboard shortcut has remained white, as it's considered the first cell in the range.

10. To select from where you are- wherever that is—to the end of a column, you can press the CTRL, SHIFT, and Down Arrow keys, in that order. If you have content in the worksheet, it will stop selecting at the end of those cells (see it stopped in cell B20), but a second press of the keys takes it to the end, in cell B1048576.

11. Repeat with the Shift, CTRL, and right arrow key to go to the end of a row. If I start in B7 and press CTRL + Shift + the right arrow, it stops selecting with cell E7, and then a second press of the keys takes me past that last cell with content in it. And there I am, selected through column XFD, in row 7.

12. Here’s a tip – at any time, you can go back to the first cell in the worksheet – cell A1 – by pressing CTRL + Home.

13. To select a series of rows, just drag—up or down—through the row numbers.
    To select a series of columns, drag left or right through the column letters.
14. You can also use the Shift key to select a series, clicking the first row or column you want and then clicking on the last, while the shift key is still pressed. Here, I've selected rows 5 through 14, and then columns B through E.

15. Selecting non-contiguous ranges requires adding the CTRL key. So to select the cities in California and then the Florida cities, I pressed CTRL after selecting the first range, and then I dragged through the second range – with the CTRL key still pressed.

16. And if you drag too far? Shift click in the cell you wanted to end on, and the excess selection is de-selected.

17. You can select non-contiguous individual cells, too—here's just a random selection of single cells, gathered by holding down CTRL as I clicked.

18. To quickly deselect? Just click in another cell, or press any arrow key on the keyboard.