Feel Tips - Control Excel Cursor Movement during Data Entry

Data entry is a usual job when we work with Excel spreadsheet. If we can control Excel cursor movement during data entry, this job can be a thankless job, or else it can be a hateful job. In this post you will be introduced some quick tips for controlling cursor’s movement.

First, change cursor movement setup

You can easily press key “Enter” to move the cursor down to the next cell. Or if you are entering data from column to column you can press “Right Arrow Key”.  Perhaps press key “Tab” is easier. However, the easiest solution is to change the cursor movement setup as the following steps.

1. Click “File” tab to “Options (under Help)”. In Excel 2007, click the “Office” button, and then click “Excel Options”. In Excel 2003, choose “Options” from the “Tools” menu.
2. In the left pane, select “Advanced”. In Excel 2003, click the “Edit” tab.
3. In the “Editing Options” section, select “Right” from the Direction dropdown under the After Pressing Enter, Move Selection option, as shown. You can choose Right, Left, Up, and Down. In Excel 2003, the option is Move Selection After Enter.
4. Click OK.

This can make your data entry job at your will from the beginning. If you don’t like the style, it’s easy to reset.

Second, select data input range

This trick is a temporary solution. Before enter data, we can select the data input range. Excel will move the cursor from column to column until you reach the right-most column in the selection. When we press key “Enter”, the cursor will be moved to the left-most column in the next row. For example, if we want to enter data in A29:B33 as the image shows below, we can first select the area. When we input data, Excel will automatically select A29. After that will be B29. And then, it’s A30 not C29.

Third, table feature in Excel

The table feature of Excel can simply convert input range to a table. In a table, Excel will control data input as trick 2. Create table in Excel can be very easy by follow the steps below (Excel 2003 doesn’t support Table feature).

1. Click the “Insert” tab.
2. In the Tables group, click “Table”.
3. Specify whether the range has header cells or not, and click OK.

Now, you don’t have to do anything but starting data entry.

Wish these tricks for controlling cursor movement can make your data entry job with happiness.