Keystroke shortcuts for moving the cell cursor Excel offers a wide variety of keystrokes for moving the cell cursor to a new cell. When you use one of these keystrokes, the program automatically scrolls a new part of the worksheet into view, if this is required to move the cell pointer.
Table below is the summary of these keystrokes and how far each one moves the cell pointer from its starting position.
| Keystrokes | Where the Cell Cursor Moves |
|---|---|
| → or Tab | Cell to the immediate right. |
| ← or Shift+Tab | Cell to the immediate left. |
| ↑ | Cell up one row. |
| ↓ | Cell down one row. |
| Home . | Cell in Column A of the current row. |
| Ctrl+Home | First cell (A1) of the worksheet |
| Ctrl+End or End, Home | Cell in the worksheet at the intersection of the last column that has any data in it and the last row that has any data in it (that is, the last cell of the so-called active area of the worksheet). |
| PgUp | Cell one full screen up in the same column. |
| PgDn | Cell one full screen down in the same column. |
| Ctrl+→ or End, → | First occupied cell to the right in the same row that is either preceded or followed by a blank cell. If no cell is occupied, the pointer goes to the cell at the very end of the row. |
| Ctrl+← or End, ← | First occupied cell to the left in the same row that is either preceded or followed by a blank cell. If no cell is occupied, the pointer goes to the cell at the very begin- ning of the row. |
| Ctrl+↑ or End, ↑ | First occupied cell above in the same column that is either preceded or followed by a blank cell. If no cell is occupied, the pointer goes to the cell at the very top of the column. |
| Ctrl+↓ or End, ↓ | First occupied cell below in the same column that is either preceded or followed by a blank cell. If no cell is occupied, the pointer goes to the cell at the very bottom of the column. |
| Ctrl+Page Down | Last occupied cell in the next worksheet of that workbook. |
| Ctrl+Page Up | Last occupied cell in the previous worksheet of that workbook. |
You can use the Scroll Lock key to “freeze” the position of the cell pointer in the worksheet so that you can scroll new areas of the worksheet in view with keystrokes such as PgUp (Page Up) and PgDn (Page Down) without changing the cell pointer’s original position (in essence, making these keystrokes work in the same manner as the scroll bars).