I have talked about shortcut keys previously. In fact I created 8 lists for Excel alone. Use this link to locate the first and then search for the others if you need a particular shortcut key to help in your daily work. Although I use a lot of shortcut keys, I found myself not remembering the shortcut key for repeating a command. So I decided to do a tip about shortcut keys again. They are only short if you have remembered them and for most of us, that means not many. Shortcut keys are available in all Microsoft Office applications.
Why is the repeat shortcut key useful
I was tidying up a data file with several sheets in it the other day when I found myself constantly repeating a particular command. I used the mouse so much that my fingers began to ache and the mouse began to smoke. Haha. All I needed to do was to delete certain rows from my spreadsheet, some 5,000 rows worth of data. These were not in any sequence. I needed to examine each row before selecting to delete it.
What I did was right mouse click on the number of the row then hold the ctrl key down to select another or even a block of rows. This was followed by a right-click on any of the highlighted rows then selecting delete from the list.
Great it works! No problem!
Had I remembered the Shortcut key it would have made the process a little quicker and meant less use of the mouse. I believe we use the mouse far too much and it is not healthy for our fingers and wrists.
The repeat shortcut key
Start by performing the command you require to repeat. In my case, that was selecting the row or rows I needed to delete. I can now move to the next row or rows to be deleted and hold down the CTRL key and type the letter Y. This will repeat the last command – ‘delete row’.
It may not seem very time saving for you, but I believe it is and it’s wrist saving too. This is just an example that Microsoft applications have the ability to repeat a command. So why not try it out and see if there is a repeating command you use that is cumbersome. To execute that with a simple Ctrl+Y will achieve the result far quicker.
