The Wonders Of F2 In MS Excel

When you’re working in Excel and you need to edit something that is already in a cell what do you do?

Do you click on the cell, then click into the formula bar to edit the contents?

Sounds like a lot of clicking?

Yeah, it did to me too.

For people who don’t really care for their mouse, it can turn into a living, breathing, clicking nightmare.

Want a way to get into the cell contents and edit without the mouse?

Yes? (I thought that at least some of you might.)

Next time you need to edit a cell, simply select it. If you want to avoid the mouse try navigating with Page Up, Page Down and the arrow keys.

Now hit the F2 key.

If the cell contained a formula then you should now see it displayed right there in the cell and you have a cursor for editing.

If the cell contained text or numeric data then you can see all the text or the data with a cursor as well.

When you finish your editing simply hit the Enter key to have Excel accept your changes.

Now that you’ve awaken from your nightmare—Happy Editing!