How do you customize Excel 2010 keyboard shortcuts?

Solution 1:

There are 3 different kinds of keyboard shortcuts I know of:

1. Ones like Ctrl-C for Copy
2. Ones like Alt-E-S-V for Edit > Paste Special > Values
3. A shortcut key combo you assign to your own macro

With # 1 I think only Word allows you to change these, e.g., you can change the shortcut for Bold from Ctrl-B to something else. I don't think Excel has ever allowed you to do this. Of course you can write a macro in Excel that changes the Bold property and then assign a keyboard shortcut to it, but that really falls under #3 above.

You use to be able to do #2 in Excel by going into Tools > Customize and then changing the location of the ampersand. For example you could change the name of the Edit menu from &Edit to &Zdit and the shortcut sequence in #2 above would be changed to Alt-Z-S-V. The only way I know to do this now would be to change the toolbar name in VBA (the old toolbars, File, Edit, etc. still exist behind the scenes in Excel 2007 and 2010 and can be accessed via code).

With #3 it's still the same as it was in earlier versions, just go into the Macro dialog and change the shortcut in Options. You only have the choice of Ctrl and one key, I believe. With VBA you can actually create longer combos like Ctrl-Shft-N (one of my favorites).

I hope that helps.

Solution 2:

You can assign a command (like "format painter") to the quick access toolbar via the dialog shown above. Then you can use ALT + a number (varies on the position of the program in the quick access toolbar) as a shortcut!

For example, in the screenshot below, the Format Painter has been added to the quick access toolbar in the 7th place, so you can now call it via alt-7.

Solution 3:

The only (real) way is to create a macro that does what you want and assign a key combination to it. It's relatively easy to record a macro to, say, 'paste values' and then add the keyboard shortcut.

If you record a macro the first dialog allows you to assign a shortcut key, but only with the CTRL key -- and Excel doesn't tell you if you are overwriting an existing key combination (like CTRL+C). Be sure to assign it to your PERSONAL.XLSB file so it's available to all spreadsheets.