In the 24th session of Chandoo.org podcast, let’s customize Excel so we become productive.
What is in this session?
Each of us use Excel in our own way. And yet, we all end up using the same Excel. That is not fair. Shouldn’t the Excel of an accountant be different from Excel of a teacher?
In this podcast, lets understand some of the powerful & useful ways to customize Excel so that we can do our work better. Tune in only if you are serious about productivity.
You can get Excel Customization Handbook free. Listen to the podcast for instructions.
In this podcast, you will learn,
- Announcements
- Why customize Excel?
- Customization options:
- Excel Options
- Quick Access Toolbar
- Excel Ribbon
- File menu / back stage view
- Themes, styles & templates
- Personal Macros
- Closing thoughts & Bonus give away instructions
Listen to this session
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | RSS
Sneak-peek at our ready to use dashboard templates
In the podcast, I spoke about my upcoming product – Ready to use Dashboard Templates. They are releasing on 13th of November (Thursday), 2014. Meanwhile, take a sneak-peek at them.
Click on the images to enlarge.
Links & Resources for customizing Excel:
Customizing Excel Options & File menu
- Excel Productivity Secrets (2007 & up)
- Excel customization tips from our readers
- Understanding backstage view (file menu) in Excel
Customizing QAT & Ribbon
- Free guide to learn & use Excel Ribbon
- How to add your personal macros to QAT
- How to create your own ribbons in Excel
- How to add your macros to Ribbon?
- Getting Excel 2003 style toolbar in Excel 2007 & up
Working with Personal Macros
Related Podcasts
- CPGIFT – Guide to Excel Ribbon
- CP020 – Time saving strategies for Business Analysts
- CP022 – Introduction to VBA & Macros
Transcript of this session:
Download this podcast transcript [PDF].
How do you customize Excel to stay awesome?
In the podcast, I revealed all my favorite ways to customize Excel. Now its your turn.
Go ahead and speak-up. Tell me how you customize Excel to maximize its potential. Please share your tips & suggestions in the comments area.
8 Responses to “Top 5 keyboard shortcuts for Excel Charts”
As far as I remember (checked, again, 2 minutes ago) in my "Excel 2013" in order to select various chart elements I need to use the Arrow keys and not the TAB key.
Practically, the TAB key does nothing (within a Chart).
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Michael (Micky) Avidan
Thanks for pointing this out. This is how I remember it too, but when I was recording the video yesterday, only TAB key worked. MS must have changed the keys in Excel 2016. I have edited the post to include both keys.
The key navigation on charts is different in 2016.
TAB cycles through a layer of objects (SHIFT+TAB cycles backwards)
ENTER move down a layer
ESC moves up a layer
So on a column chart with title/legend/data labels if you select the plotarea the TAB will go through Title > Legend > Plotarea.
ENTER at plotarea will then select Vertical axis. Tab will take you through
Horizontal axis > gridlines > Series > Horizontal Axis.
ENTER with series selected will then allow you to TAB through individual data points and data labels.
If you ENTER on datalabels you can TAB through each data label.
ALT + F1 : to create default chart
ALT+E S T = CTRL + ALT + V, T : I find that easier to remember
I second what Michael already said about TAB and arrow keys. I can't help but think if this is related to the "," or ";" as separator. I prefer to use the chart tools - layout- drop down box, anyway.
Got to be F11 for instant charting. Highlight your data , hit F11 and voila! ?
Ctrl+1 is the most important chart shortcut. In fact, it works for any Excel object: whatever is selected, Ctrl+1 opens the task pane or dialog to format that object.
Somewhere along the line, maybe when Excel 2016 came out, the arrow keys stopped working to cycle through the elements of a chart. But what works is holding Ctrl while clicking the arrow keys. I haven't gotten used to the Tab and other keys, but as long as Ctrl+Arrow works, I'm good.
And F4 used to be so helpful when formatting a lot of charts. But since Excel 2007 came out, it has been mostly useless. It used to remember a whole set of changes at once, so I get that the newer modeless dialogs make that impractical. But now it only seems to work with formatting of lines and borders, and maybe fills. I find myself writing a lot of VBA one-liners in the Immediate Window to handle these tedious formatting tasks.
after clicking on a chart, is there a shortcut key to copy it?
Thank you for the Alt E S T - tip. This is more than a time saver. Because of dynamic charts or de-activated external references to data when you make the charts, you often have empty charts that are otherwise impossible to format. So this shortcut helps adressing that. I will work with it more and see if there remain some obstacles.