Excel has basic shortcuts to help you bold, underline, italicize, and strikethrough text in your cells. While these shortcuts are very simple, they can save you lots of time while formatting your Excel spreadsheets and getting things to look nice.
Excel has options to apply bold, italics, and underlining right in the ribbon (and an option for strikethrough which is a little harder to access, depending on your version of Excel) but you'll be much faster to just use the shortcuts. They're easy to learn, and you will probably use them very often while working in Excel. Check out this list of top Excel shortcuts by WallStreetOasis.
To bold text in Excel you can certainly use the Bold button in the Home tab of the ribbon, but to speed up your work in Excel you should get in the habit of using the bold shortcut instead.
Simply select all the cells that you want to be bold, then hold Ctrl and press B. This will turn all the selected cells bold. If all the selected cells are already bold, it will return them to normal (or un-bold them).
In Excel for Mac, hold the ⌘ (command) key rather than Ctrl key and press B.
Similar to bolding text, you can italicize and underline text just fine without a keyboard shortcut, but the shortcuts make you faster and more productive. As with bolding, simply select one or more cells which you would like to be in italics, then hold Ctrl and press i.
Again, this will change all selected cells to italics. If all selected cells are already italics, it will change them back to standard.
In Excel for Mac, hold the ⌘ key and press i.
To underline text in Excel, hold the Ctrl key and press U. This will change all selected cells to underline. If all the selected cells are already underlined, it will change them back to normal.
In Excel for Mac, hold the ⌘ key and press U.
Of all the simple formatting modifications (bold, underline, italics, strikethrough), strikethrough is the most difficult to do without a shortcut, but is typically the least commonly used.
Strikethrough is text with a line through it, as if you're crossing something out.
Simply select all the cells to which you want to apply strikethrough, then hold Ctrl and press 5. This will strikethrough all selected cells unless all selected cells already have strikethrough, in which case it will return them to normal.
In Excel for Mac, hold down the ⌘ (command) and shift keys, and then press X.
The best way to learn these shortcuts an be faster and more productive in Excel is to practice them as much as possible. Rather than just reading about these shortcuts, you need to try some hands-on practice exercises to build muscle memory.
Try some Excel exercises with the bold, italics, underline, and strikethrough shortcuts today!