In Microsoft Excel, the Enter key is a handy tool that makes working with spreadsheets easier and more efficient. Firstly, it helps you finish typing in a cell. When you type something, like words or numbers, and press Enter, it saves that information in the cell. This key is also great for moving around in your spreadsheet. After you press Enter, the cursor moves down to the next cell, which is really useful when you're entering a lot of data in a column.
It's also important for formulas. When you write a math problem in a cell and press Enter, Excel calculates the answer for you. If you're changing what's already in a cell, pressing Enter saves your new changes.
The Enter key even helps you when you're choosing options in different boxes in Excel; it selects the option you've highlighted. For those who like using keyboard shortcuts, holding Alt and pressing Enter lets you use special commands without needing a mouse. Lastly, if you want to start a new line in the same cell, just press Alt and Enter together, and it creates a neat, new line.
By default, pressing the Enter key in Excel on an active cell submits anything you've typed into cell and selects the cell below it. However, you can also choose to stay on the active cell or go to the next cell instead. In this guide, we're going to show you how to change pressing Enter behavior in Excel. Also we will give you some additional informations about Enter key and what its relevancies are with other keys like 'TAB'.
Here's a step-by-step guide on how to find the settings where you can change what the Enter key does in Excel
- First, you need to get to the Excel Options menu. To do this, start by clicking on the 'File' tab in the top left corner of your Excel window. This tab is part of the Ribbon, which is the toolbar running along the top of Excel. Once you click 'File', a menu will appear. Look down this list and click on 'Options'. This is usually near the bottom of the list. Clicking 'Options' opens a new window, which is the Excel Options window.
- In the Excel Options window, you'll see a bunch of tabs listed on the left side. Look for the one that says 'Advanced' and click on it. This tab is typically found near the top of the list. When you click on it, it will show you more advanced settings that you can change in Excel.
- Now that you're in the Advanced tab, it's time to find the specific setting for the Enter key. At the very top of the list in the Advanced options, you'll see a setting named 'After pressing Enter, move selection'. This is the setting that controls what happens when you press Enter in Excel. It decides whether your selection (the active cell) moves to another cell and in which direction it moves, or if it stays in the same cell.
In the Excel Options menu, specifically under the 'Advanced' tab, you will find the setting that controls the behavior of the Enter key. The default option set in Excel for this setting is 'Down'. This means that when you press Enter after entering data in a cell, Excel automatically moves the active cell selection to the cell directly below the one you were working in. This default behavior is often convenient for entering data in columns, as it streamlines the process by moving downwards through the rows.
However, you have the flexibility to change this direction to suit your data entry needs. Right next to the 'After pressing Enter, move selection' setting, there is a dropdown menu. This menu allows you to choose a different direction for the cell selection to move when you press Enter. The available options usually include 'Right', 'Left', 'Up', and 'Down'.
By selecting 'Right', for example, the active cell will move to the right after pressing Enter, which is useful when filling out data row-wise. Choosing 'Left' will move the selection to the left, and 'Up' will move it upwards. Each option can significantly impact your workflow and efficiency, depending on the nature of the data entry task you are performing.
In the Excel Options menu, under the 'Advanced' tab, you have another choice besides changing the direction of the cell movement after pressing Enter. You can actually choose to stop the cell from moving at all. If you look at the 'After pressing Enter, move selection' option, you'll notice it has a checkbox next to it. By default, this box is checked, which means pressing Enter will move the cell selection in the direction you've chosen (like Down, Up, Left, or Right).
But if you uncheck this box, you're telling Excel not to move to another cell when you press Enter. Instead, when you press Enter after typing something in a cell, Excel will save your entry but keep the active cell selection right where it is. This can be really useful in certain situations.
For example, if you're filling out a form in Excel, it's often handy to have the cell selection move down to the next row after pressing Enter, as it speeds up the process of entering data in a sequence. But, there are times when you might not want the cell to move. One such scenario is when you're working with formulas. Suppose you enter a formula in a cell and then need to copy this formula to other cells. If the cell selection doesn't move away after pressing Enter, it's easier to copy the formula right away without needing to navigate back to the cell you just left.
So, the ability to disable the cell movement after pressing Enter gives you more control and can make your work in Excel more efficient, depending on what you're doing. It's a small setting, but tweaking it can have a big impact on how smoothly you work with your spreadsheets.
After you've made your desired changes to the Enter key behavior in the Excel Options dialog, it's important to ensure that these changes are saved and applied. To do this, you need to finalize your settings by clicking the 'OK' button.
When you click 'OK', Excel will save any changes you've made to the settings in the Advanced tab, including the behavior of the Enter key. This means whether you've changed the direction in which the cell selection moves, or you've chosen to disable movement altogether, these choices will only become active in your Excel application after you press 'OK'.
If you close the Excel Options dialog without clicking 'OK', for instance, by clicking 'Cancel' or the close ('X') button at the top of the window, Excel will not save the changes you made. Instead, it will revert to the settings that were in place before you opened the Options dialog.
The 'Enter' Key Versus the 'Tab' Key in Excel
In Excel, the Enter and Tab keys are both used to move your active cell (the one you're working in) to a new spot, but they do this in different ways. Normally, when you press the Enter key, the active cell moves down to the next row. On the other hand, the Tab key moves the active cell to the right, into the next column. Understanding how these two keys work can really help you move around and work with your data faster and more easily in Excel.
What's interesting is that you can change how the Enter key works as we mentioned.
Besides the Enter and Tab keys, Excel has lots of other keyboard shortcuts that can make your work easier and quicker. For example, if you press Ctrl and an arrow key at the same time, Excel will jump the active cell all the way to the last cell that isn't empty in the direction of the arrow. This is a super-fast way to get around big groups of data. Knowing these kinds of shortcuts can make a big difference in how efficiently you can use Excel. You can check our 'Excel Keyboard Shortcuts: Top 10 Shortcuts for Excel' article for more keyboard shortcuts in Excel.
Tips
- To speed up typing in Excel, there are some handy tips and tricks with the Enter key you can use. First, instead of clicking on a cell to change it, press the F2 key. This lets you start editing the cell right away. Also, you can change what the Enter key does. Go to File, then Options, and then Advanced. Here, under 'Editing options', you can make your changes.
- You can also change what the Enter key does in Excel by using something called VBA, which stands for Visual Basic for Applications. VBA is a way to write your own little programs inside Excel. With VBA, you can set up the Enter key to do special things that you decide. For example, you could write a VBA code that makes the Enter key automatically put a certain number or date in a specific cell every time you press it. Or, you could make it do a math problem automatically. This is like creating your own shortcut or rule for the Enter key in Excel.
- Another quick tip is using Ctrl + Enter. If you have a bunch of cells selected, this shortcut fills all of them with the same thing, like a date or a name. This is really useful if you need to put the same information in many cells. And if you want to go back up to the cell above, not the next one, use Shift + Enter. This is great when you're dealing with a lot of data and need to move upwards.
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If you need to enter multiple lines of text in a single cell, you can easily do this by pressing ALT + ENTER. This shortcut is particularly helpful for situations like typing a mailing address or a detailed description within one cell. When you use ALT + ENTER, the text in the cell wraps, meaning it moves to a new line within the same cell. As a result, Excel automatically changes the cell's height to accommodate all the text. This is a great feature, but it's worth remembering that it might alter the overall look of your worksheet because of the adjusted cell heights.
