Moving and counting rows or columns
Navigation
Excel has some clever keyboard shortcuts to let you move to the extremes of your worksheet. ‘Extremes’ doesn’t mean the absolute end of the worksheet, rather the end of the current block of filled or unfilled cells.
Hold down the Ctrl key and press the right-arrow key – the active cell will move to the right. If the current cell is empty it will stop when it reaches the first filled cell to the right. If the current cell has content, Excel will stop when it reaches the last filled cell to the right. Eventually you’ll reach the far edge of the worksheet.
The same thing works with Ctrl plus the up to down arrow keys to move through a column.
Sounds complicated but try it out, you’ll find it’s a quick way to navigate around a worksheet.
Where am I?
Occasionally you need to get a cell reference for the current cell or another cell.
Enter ROW() or COLUMN() these functions will return the position within the worksheet.
=ROW() in cell C10 returns 10 – because it’s the tenth row down.
=COLUMN() in cell C10 returns 3 – because it’s the third column across
=ROW(E15) returns 15 – because E15 is the fifteenth row down
=COLUMN(E15) returns 5 – because E15 is the fifth column down
