Keyboard shortcuts are great time savers, as long as you can remember them. I recently discovered that Excel uses the top left keys on your keyboard as easy to remember formatting shortcuts for numbers, date, and time. The shortcuts are as follows:
| SHORTCUT KEYS | FORMATTING APPLIED |
EXAMPLE |
| CTRL+SHIFT+~ | General format. This is the default format for Excel, so you will only need this one for a cell that has already been formatted differently. I’m not making it up when I say that most people I talk with on the phone refer to the ~ as “squiggly line”. So I’ll make its actual name, Tilde, the nerd word of the day. |
12345 |
| CTRL+SHIFT+! | Number format with 2 decimal places, thousand separator, and minus sign for negative numbers. |
12,345.00 |
| CTRL+SHIFT+@ | Time format as H:MM AM/PM |
12:34 PM |
| CTRL+SHIFT+# | Date format as DD-MMM-YY |
31-Jan-12 |
| CTRL+SHIFT+$ | Currency format with 2 decimal places and negatives in parentheses |
$12,345.00 |
| CTRL+SHIFT+% | Percentage format with no decimal places |
12% |
