Tonight I was working on a large financial model and banging my head against the fact that all my old Excel keyboard shortcuts dont work on the Mac.

So I dug around and pulled together the list of ones that I commonly use.

Even basic shortcuts youve been using for years in Windows may not work as you expect.

In reality, Excel shortcuts on the Mac are quite capable, you just have to understand and adjust to certain differences.

For example, the Command key is abbreviated as, the Control key with, and the option key as.

These symbols have a long history on the Mac, and youll find them in menus everywhere.

There really arent too many symbols, so I recommend that you bite the bullet and memorize them.

The table below shows some example shortcuts with a translation.

These keys sit at the top of the keyboard and are labeled F1 to F12 on standard keyboards and F13, F14 and higher on extended keyboards.

For example, you can use F1 for help, F7 for spelling, and shift F3 to insert a function.

But if you try these shortcuts directly on a Mac, they dont work.

Why.

This means that if press only the function keys in Excel, youll end up controlling the Mac, and not Excel.

Here you can check a box that will that will change function key behavior to work like standard function keys.

In essence, this setting reverses behavior so that you need to use fn to control the Mac.

This is a problem, because many of these keys are used in Excel shortcuts.

The solution is to use specific substitutions, as shown in the table below.

This doesnt matter much when youre performing an action that has a dedicated shortcut (i.e.

Control B for bold), since dedicated shortcuts are faster than ribbon shortcuts.

But when you want to trigger an action that doesnt have a dedicated shortcut (like sort, hide gridlines, align text, etc.), it hurts a bit.

The shortcut to toggle absolute and relative references is F4 in Windows, while on a Mac, its Command T.

For a complete list of Windows and Mac shortcuts, see our side-by-side list.

Whenever we use a shortcut, we show both the Windows and Mac version.

For example, you can use F4 to toggle between absolute and relative references, Control Shift L to toggle a filter on and off, etc.

So far, all the shortcuts that have been adjusted to match Windows shortcuts remain backwards compatible with previous Mac-only shortcuts.

For example while F4 toggles references on the Mac in Excel 365, the old shortcut Command T still works as well.

We create short videos, and clear examples of formulas, functions, pivot tables, conditional formatting, and charts.

Mac Shortcut For Insert Row In Excel