11/9/2019 Excel For Mac Go To Special
Excel provides a dedicated dialog box to access special groups of cells, called 'Go To Special'. To access this dialog with the keyboard, type Control + G, then. In reality, Excel shortcuts on the Mac are quite capable, you just have to understand and adjust to certain differences. In this article, I'll walk you through the key differences you need to be aware of to work productively with Excel shortcuts on a Mac.
I believe that the GO TO SPECIAL Dialog Box is one of the most useful tools in Excel! Because, before you can perform ' an action' in Excel - e.g. Format, Delete, Edit, etc. you must first SELECT the cell or cells that you wish to apply the action to! In this Tutorial, I demonstrate how to take advantage of the GO TO SPECIAL Dialog Box to: Select Cells with: Comments, Constants, Objects, Formulas, Conditional Formatting and much, much more! In my experience, I have found that most Excel users are completely unaware of this valuable and versitle tool.
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Let me know what you think about GO TO SPECIAL after you view this video! Danny Rocks The Company Rocks www.thecompanyrocks.com.
27 comments This article is written by Myles Arnott from I briefly covered Excel’s Go To Special function in the series of articles and both Chandoo and I felt that it deserved a post all of its own. What is Go To Special? Go To Special is a tool within Microsoft Excel that enables you to quickly select cells of a specified type within your Excel worksheet. Once you get to grips with this function and what it can be used for you will wonder how you ever lived without it.
Where do I find Go To Special? Shortcut: F5 or CTRL + G and then click on Special 2003: Edit Go To 2007 & 2010:Home Find & Select Go To Special on the Ribbon (Note: a cut down selection of the most useful options in Go To Special can be selected directly under Find & Select on the Ribbon in 2007 & 2010.) Lets look at Go To Special in action. This is more or less the same workbook that we used in the Managing Spreadsheet Risk series, modified slightly to allow us to cover all elements of the Go To Special function. (Note that it therefore includes a lot of errors) Here are the options on the Go To Special dialogue box: Lets run through each of the Go to special options. Comments Action: Selects all cells with comments Benefit: A quick way of finding all cells with comments, particularly useful if you want to clear all comments from your worksheet Constants Action: Selects all cells containing constants Options: Numbers: Selects all cells with constants that are numbers Text: Selects all cells with constants that are text Logicals: Selects all cells with constants that are logicals (TRUE or FALSE) Benefit: The number constants in your spreadsheet should all be inputs. Highlighting all constants is a great way of checking the structure of your spreadsheet. I normally format inputs with a white background and blue font.
A great tool for auditing – select all constants and change the fill colour. This instantly gives you visibility of your model inputs and flags any inconsistencies.
Formulas Action: Selects all cells containing formulas Options: Numbers:Selects all cells with formulas that return numbers Text: Selects all cells with formulas that return text Logicals: Selects all cells with formulas that return logicals (TRUE or FALSE) Benefit: Highlighting all of the formulas within your spreadsheet is a great way of checking the structure and consistency of your spreadsheet. Blanks Action: Selects all blank cells Benefit: A quick way to select all blank cells. This is useful if you want to quickly format all blank cells or as a way of identifying cells that look blank but actually contain a constant or formula (i.e. With white on white formatting). (Related: ) Current region Action: Selects the current region Comment: I would recommend using the shortcut CTRL +.
instead Current array Action: Selects the entire array if the active cell is within an array Comment: I have never used this option but would be very interested to hear if anyone has. Objects Action: Selects all objects (shapes, images, charts etc) Benefit: A simple way to select all objects. This could be useful if you wanted to quickly delete all objects in the worksheet. Row differences Action: Single row: Selects the cells that are different from the active cell within the selected row Multiple rows: The comparison is made for each row independently.
The cell used for comparison for each row is the cell in the same column as the active cell. Benefit: This is a very useful auditing tool for highlighting inconsistent formulas in a row. It also offers a quick and easy way to. (Note: You can change the active cell within a selected row by pressing enter) Column differences Action: Single column: Selects the cells that are different from the active cell within the selected column Multiple columns: The comparison is made for each column independently. The cell used for comparison for each column is the cell in the same row as the active cell. Benefit: This is a very useful auditing tool for highlighting inconsistent formulas in a column. It also offers a quick and easy way to spot differences across multiple columns.
Precedents Action: Selects the cells that feed into the selected cell(s) Options: Direct only: First level precedent only All levels: All levels of cell precedents Benefit: Provides an alternative to Trace Precedents in the formula auditing bar. Personally I prefer using this tool to select and then colour-fill the precedent cells as it allows you to select the precedents for a range of cells rather than just one. I also find that the arrows in Trace Precedents can get a little messy. Dependents Action: Selects the cells that the selected cell(s) feed into Options: Direct only: First level dependents only All levels: All levels of cell dependents Benefit: As above this provides an alternative to Trace Dependents in the formula auditing bar. Last cell Action: Selects the last used cell within your worksheet (containing data or formatting) Benefit: A quick way to locate your last cell. This is a very effective way of identifying the range of cells used of the worksheet.
If your simple spreadsheet suddenly becomes very large in MB terms this can be due to Excel incorrectly thinking that you are using a lot more of the cells than you actually are. A good indicator of this is that the right hand scroll bar slider becomes very small.
Using Go To Special Last cell lets you quickly identify the last cell Excel thinks you are using. Visible cells only Action: Selects cells that are not hidden (& therefore are visible) Benefit: Useful if you only want to change the non-hidden cells and leave the hidden cells unchanged Conditional formats Action: Selects all of the cells with conditional formatting applied Options: All: Selects all cells with conditional formatting applied Same: Selects all cells that have the same conditional formatting as is applied to the active cell Benefit: An easy way to quickly identify all of the cells with conditional formatting applied to them. A useful tool for understanding the formatting applied to a spreadsheet. You need to be aware that, depending on the conditional formatting set, you may not be able to highlight the cells using a fill colour as the conditional formatting may override it. Comment: The manage rules option within the conditional formatting menu also enables you to identify cells with conditional formatting applied.
Data validation Action: Selects all of the cells with data validation applied Options: All: Selects all cells with data validation applied Same: Selects all cells that have the same data validation as is applied to the active cell Benefit: An easy way to quickly identify all of the cells with data validation applied to them. This is particularly useful from an auditing perspective or if you want to clear the validations in these cells.
Some considerations for Go To Special. Go To Special only selects cells in the current worksheet rather than the whole workbook. Go To Special searches within the selected range, if you want to select the entire worksheet ensure that only one cell is selected Putting this in to practice In order to give you some examples of how to use the Go To Special tools covered above I have put together a list of actions for you to run over the attached spreadsheet. Have a play and see what you discover: (note that the action “Select cell A1” is simply to clear the current range selected.
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