How to create custom shortcuts in Excel 2016 for mac

Question

I recently updated to Excel 2016 from Excel 2011 for mac, and I'm missing a very important feature which saved me a lot of time: custom keyboard shortcuts, i.e. being able to create new shortcuts for commands, or edit existing shortcuts.

I have googled for this and searched the support site for this and haven't found anything yet.

What surprises me most is that this feature would exist in Word (see here) and not in Excel.

Has anyone found a solution or workaround?

Solution 1

For now, at least, you need to do this with the OS X System Preferences -> Keyboard -> Shortcuts feature. This only works for commands that are available on the application's menus.

I was able to create shortcuts this way for my two most frequent functions, Insert Rows and Delete Rows. The menu item for Insert Rows is called "Rows". It's on the Insert Menu, but you just enter "Rows" in the shortcut. The menu item for Delete is Delete in the Edit menu, so just enter "Delete". This isn't the same as "Delete Rows", which is not available on the menu so I need to select a row with Shift-Space before deleting it.

I'm hopeful they will restore this feature in the future.

Solution 2

Step-by-step instructions on how to do this on this page:

https://support.office.com/en-nz/article/Create-a-custom-keyboard-shortcut-for-Office-2016-for-Mac-6bbeb90e-96d9-4e03-b199-fc026ebdc321

I followed these instructions to get FIND back (Cmd-F instead of Shift-Ctrl-F) and it worked perfect. I did have to quit and restart Excel.

Key steps from the link:

1. From the Apple menu, click System Preferences > Keyboard > Shortcuts > App Shortcuts.

2. Click the + sign to add a keyboard shortcut.

3. In the Application menu, click the Office for Mac app (Microsoft Excel, Microsoft Word, Microsoft PowerPoint, Microsoft OneNote, Microsoft Outlook) you want to create keyboard a shortcut for.

4. Enter a Menu Title and the Keyboard Shortcut and click Add.

Comments

[2540625]

Doesn't work for basic features that Microsoft still refuses to put into the menubar (such as Zoom In and Zoom Out), unfortunately.

[fixer1234]

External links can break, in which case the answer wouldn't be useful. It's better to include the essential information here and use the link for attribution and further reading.

[twalbaum]

Thanks, using it for "Rows" and "Columns" as well as "Trace Precedents", but still cannot use it for paste values/paste format. Unfortunately there seems to be no workaround :(

[David C.]

Yes, but please note that this technique only works for commands that Microsoft put on the menu bar. There is no way to change the organization of the menu-bar (as you can with the ribbon) or to apply keyboard shortcuts to commands that only appear on the ribbon (and not on the menu-bar)