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5 essential Excel Shortcuts for M&A

Being an analyst can be hard sometimes. Your office has become your living room and sometimes it can be hard to make time for your loved ones. Occasionally, that is just part of the job and unavoidable. But in other cases, this circumstance can be avoided and optimising the way you use Excel seems to be a good starting point. Of course, using shortcuts is not something new that you’ve never heard of before – but some of them might not be known to everyone or things you’ve forgotten over time. Here come 5 basic Excel shortcuts you have to know as an analyst.

  1. Highlighting cells with hardcoded content

“F5, Alt + I, N”

The most basic rule in building a financial model is: Always stick to the same hardcoded cell when you need a specific input figure for your model. Using this shortcut helps you in finding all your hardcoded input cells. Not only that, but you can use this tool as a quick check to see if there are any hardcoded values in your financial model where they should not be.

  1. Switching between Working tabs

“Ctrl + Page Up/Down“

Instead of constantly switching between keyboard and mouse, use this shortcut to switch between your working tabs quickly and easily. This one might not be the biggest time saver but it saves you the annoyance of jumping countless times from keyboard to mouse and back.

It’ll saves you about 1 second each time you do it, but multiplied by the times you jump between your tabs while building a financial model, it becomes worth trying.

  1. Marking Cells

“Shift + F8”

Using this shortcut enables you to mark different cells without using your mouse.

Same principle here as in number 2 – Of course you can choose the cells with your mouse. But why not save the few seconds by using this tool?

  1. Formating cells

“Ctrl + 1”

Formatting an Excel sheet is just as time consuming as it is hated by everyone who has to do it. Therefore, the shortcut for formatting cells in Excel is the obviously the most obligatory one in each basic Excel shortcut list.

  1. Auto Sum

“Alt + Shift + 0”

Well, I admit it, a shortcut for adding up does not seem to be that ground-breaking at first sight. Still, using this short cut saves you the seconds you need to select the cells you want to add.

Adding up the time (for example with Auto Sum) you save by using those shortcuts, you can create a few minutes more spare time for yourself – spare time that you can use to work on your Instagram profile for instance.

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