Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “The Function Keys in Excel”.
In this article, i’m going to show you what each of the function keys do in excel, so all of the keys from f1 to f12, and i think you’ll find that these will make using excel more user-friendly and easier for you we’ll start with f1. Whenever you get stuck in excel or you need some help, just make sure you’ve clicked somewhere in the spreadsheet and tap f1, and it will bring up the help panel on the right side of excel. And at this point you can browse through the recommended topics or go to formulas and functions. If that’s what you need help with, or of course you could do a search, so maybe i need help with macros.
Of course, if you need help with macros, you should watch my macros videos, but by doing a search i can get to some help and it steers me toward where to activate macros gives me information on how to run a macro, etc. When you’re done with the help panel, you can just click the x to close it out. Next we have the f2 button and what f2 does is it takes us inside of a cell, whatever cell we’ve clicked on when we tap f2 it takes us inside the cell. Now you may be wondering. Why is that even useful, because, of course we know you can get on a cell by clicking on it once to get inside the cell? You have to double click on it, so clicking twice gets me inside the cell. Well, that’s exactly what f2 does so, why have a function key, a shortcut? Basically, that does the same thing that you can do just by double clicking with the mouse.
Well, it’s all about keeping your hands on the keyboard anytime. You have to take your hands off the keyboard. To use the mouse. You’Ve lost a little bit of efficiency in how you use excel. The f2 button can help us to keep our hands on the keyboard and typing. Next, we have f3 when you tap the f3 button. It gives you a list of all named ranges and it opens this paste name dialog box.
So you can see i’ve got a bands named range and a genres named range. If you’re not familiar with named ranges, you need to watch my tutorial on that topic, but by tapping f3 i can now simply click paste list and it pastes a list of my named ranges in this case. That may not be very helpful, but there are times when you just want a list of all of your named ranges. I’M going to tap f3 again to show you that you can also just select a specific range and then click.
Ok and then i can tap enter on the keyboard and it pulls in my entire genres named range. It’S basically this same data here, but i was able to quickly and easily paste it here in column. I and the f3 button made that possible and easy to do. Next.
We have f4, i’m just going to double click on cell h2 and i’ll tap f4 and look what it does. It’S adding dollar signs to my formula and it’s moving those dollar signs, sometimes to the left, sometimes to the right, sometimes there’s two of them. What is going on here? Well, those dollar signs indicate absolute references and so by tapping f4. What i’m doing is i’m toggling through absolute reference options, and so this is an easy way to change how this formula works.
Look for a future tutorial on this idea of using absolute cell references. Next, we have f5 by tapping f5. I get the go to dialog box and again it lists my named ranges, bands and genres. I probably should add a few more named ranges, but this dialog box simply makes it easy for me to quickly jump to one of these named ranges: how about bands i’ll click, ok and i’m quickly, taken to the band’s named range tap. F5 again now i want to go to genres that time i just double clicked and it took me directly to genres now notice that you can also go down here to reference and you can type, let’s say z500 and tap enter or click.
Ok and it takes you directly to z500, there are also some special options that you have here. That might be helpful, for example, formulas click, ok, and it’s highlighted for me the cells or columns in this case that have formulas involved. Let’S move on to f6 by tapping f6, i can move from one place in excel to another, sometimes that’s within a sheet.
Sometimes it’s within the excel layout that we have here, and this can be kind of hard to demonstrate, but i just tapped f6 and noticed that it now highlighted this button here on the status bar. This is the macros button on the status bar. If i tap f6 again, it takes me to a list of all of my shortcut keys.
Basically, so at this point now i could tap n and it changes the ribbon and the options that i have, because i did tap in that served. Basically, as if i had clicked on the insert tab and that’s why it took me to the insert ribbon next, we have f7. If i tap f7, it brings up the spell checker and i can proceed to double check the spelling in my spreadsheet.
Next we have f8 and f8 just like f6. If you recall f6, is what cycled us through the different parts of the spreadsheet and also like f2, each of those function keys serves to help us keep our fingers on the keyboard. So, let’s take a look at what f8 does. Let’S say, i’m trying to select the band the killers and their most recent awesome album imploding, the mirage.
I want to select all instances of that information and, let’s say the active cell is a2. I can tap the f8 button and if you look here in the lower left corner in the status bar, it’s telling me extend selection, that’s what f8 does it enables extend mode, and that makes it so that i can easily use the keys on the keyboard. I’M using the arrow keys in this case to go down and to the right and i’m expanding or extending the range of cells that is highlighted or selected. So this is the equivalent of using the mouse to click and drag to highlight a range of data, but instead of having to use the mouse, i can just use whatever cell i’m currently in tap f8 and then use the arrow keys on the keyboard to expand. The selection and then, of course i could do ctrl c to copy or whatever else i need to do. Next, we have f9 and f9 is kind of difficult to show. It has to do with manual calculations and automatic calculations. So here in column h, i have some formulas that are being calculated automatically and i can go here to the formula tab and on the formula ribbon in the calculation group. There are calculation options right now it’s automatically calculated. I could switch it to manually calculated.
If i wanted to, let’s look at what that does, let’s say the number of sales of imploding – the mirage – let’s say the number sold goes up from 275 to 385. If i tap enter on the keyboard notice that the sales numbers here, the total income doesn’t change. Why? Because i changed the calculation options from automatic to manual. If that’s what you prefer, you can use f9 at any point to force a manual calculation so watch as i tap f9 by tapping f9.
It forced the manual calculation and the number updated. Next. We have f10 when i press f10. It shows the key tips in the ribbon, in other words, shortcuts to the different options that are here on the excel ribbon.
Next, we have f11 and f11 will automatically create a chart in its own tab in excel, and all you have to do is make sure that you’ve clicked somewhere in the data that you have in the spreadsheet, so i’ll click here and i’ll tap f11. And i get a brand new chart on a new sheet now that chart may not make a lot of sense. You may have to think through your data, whether it works well in a chart or not, but excel will at least attempt to create a chart for you automatically. You can also click and drag to highlight what you would like to make the chart out of and then tap f11, and that will give you a chart based on what you had selected and finally, we have f12 when you tap f12.
It brings up the save as dialog box, and i could quickly save this spreadsheet. I could save it under a different name. Whatever i need to do so. Those are the 12 function keys in excel.
I hope you found this tutorial to be helpful. If you did please like follow and subscribe and when you do click the bell so you’ll be notified. Whenever i post another video, if you’d like to support my channel, you can do that through my patreon account and you’ll see a link to that in the description below. If you want to learn more about this great new album by the killers, it’s called imploding, the mirage you’ll find links to more information in the description below this video .