How to Use Spreadsheet Shortcuts
The budget editor supports keyboard navigation, copy/paste, and a fill handle to speed up data entry. This article covers all the available shortcuts. You need Manage or Full Access permission and...
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The budget editor supports keyboard navigation, copy/paste, and a fill handle to speed up data entry. This article covers all the available shortcuts.
You need Manage or Full Access permission and must be in the budget editor.
Keyboard navigation
Moving between cells with the keyboard is faster than clicking each one.
| Key | What it does |
|---|---|
| Arrow keys | Move one cell in any direction. While you are editing a cell, Left and Right move the cursor inside the amount first, and only step to the next cell once the cursor has reached the end |
| Enter | Confirm the current value and move down one row. Shift+Enter moves up |
| F2 | Start editing the focused cell, with the cursor at the end of the amount |
| Escape | Cancel the edit in progress and put back the value the cell held when you started. Focus does not move |
| Delete or Backspace | Clear the cell. What this does depends on whether you are editing, so see the note below |
| Home / End | Jump to the first or last editable cell in the current row |
| Cmd+Home / Cmd+End | Jump to the very first or very last editable cell in the grid (Ctrl on Windows) |
| Page Up / Page Down | Move up or down by one screen of rows |
| Cmd+D | Fill down: copy the cell directly above into the focused cell (Ctrl+D on Windows). This copies one cell, not a range |
| Cmd+Z | Undo. Cmd+Shift+Z redoes (Ctrl on Windows) |
| Tab | Move to the next control on the page, in the normal reading order |
A note on Tab. Tab is deliberately left to your browser, so it walks every control on the page in order: the entry-mode buttons, the category name, the percent change field, and the month amounts. It does not hop from one amount cell straight to the next. Use the arrow keys for cell-to-cell movement inside the grid, and Tab when you want to reach the controls around it.
Clearing a cell, and the Backspace catch
Delete and Backspace do the same thing as each other, but not the same thing in both situations, and this is the one that catches people out.
- You clicked into the cell, or tabbed into it. You are editing, so Backspace deletes one character at a time, exactly as it would anywhere else.
- You arrowed onto the cell and have not typed in it. You are not editing, so one press clears the whole month in that cell, in a single step.
If you clear a month you did not mean to, Cmd+Z puts it back.
Copy and paste
- Click a cell (or select a range - see below) to focus it.
- Press Cmd+C (Mac) or Ctrl+C (Windows) to copy.
- Click the destination cell and press Cmd+V (Mac) or Ctrl+V (Windows) to paste.
Paste fills starting at the focused cell and continues to the right (or down, if you copied a range). This is useful for copying one month's value across several months at once.
Selecting a range
- Click a cell to start the selection.
- Hold Shift and click another cell to extend the selection, or click and drag across multiple cells.
- A small floating pill appears showing the count of selected cells and their sum. This is useful for quickly checking a subtotal before committing amounts.
The fill handle
The fill handle is a small square that appears at the bottom-right corner of the selected cell. Dragging it copies the cell's value to neighboring cells.
- Drag down a column to copy the same amount into rows below (useful for setting the same annual budget for several rows).
- Drag across months to fill the same value into multiple months on the same row (most useful in Manual mode when most months share the same amount).
- Click a cell to select it. The fill handle appears as a small square at its bottom-right corner.
- Hover over the fill handle until the cursor changes to a crosshair.
- Click and drag in the direction you want to fill.
Without a mouse. The fill handle is a button, so you can Tab to it and press Enter or Space. It is announced as "Fill annual amount down from ..." or "Fill ... amount across later months", and activating it fills the remaining cells in that direction in one step, with no dragging.
Undo and redo
Cmd+Z steps back through your edits and Cmd+Shift+Z steps forward again (Ctrl on Windows). This covers typed amounts, cleared cells, fills, and pasted ranges, and each step is named after what it did, so you can see what you are undoing.
Undo and redo stand still while one of the grid's own dialogs is open, such as the confirmation you get when switching a row's entry mode, or the Add account and Add group dialogs. Close the dialog and they work again. This is deliberate: it stops the grid changing behind a dialog that is describing the version you can see.