How to Tab Down in Excel (Must-Know Method)

In today’s data-driven world, proficiency in Excel is an indispensable skill for nearly everybody.

You can enhance your Excel efficiency many folds by understanding the art of navigation within Excel. This will enable you to work smarter, and not harder.

Especially if you want to move swiftly and frequently across cells in all directions, mark this guide as a must-read for yourself 🏃‍♀️

In the article that follows, I am going to show you how you can use the Tab key (there on the left of your keyboard) to move between cells. And other advanced methods to navigate between your Excel sheet to streamline your workflow.

Table of Contents

What is the tab key and how does it work in Excel

Not having to rely on the mouse can speed up your work significantly. Especially in Excel, when all you need are the right keyboard shortcuts ⌨

Talking of keyboard shortcuts, we’ve seen the Tab key on our keyboards.

It is placed on the left of your keyboard.

Generally, if you are working with cells in Excel, to move between cells, you use the arrow keys.

Using the arrow keys, you can move in all four directions around the selected cell. Similar to the arrow keys, we have two other keys that can help you move around in Excel 🚀

• Tab key: The Tab key will move you to the next column. In other words, towards the cell on the right.
• Tab key + Shift key: Pressing the Tab key together with the Shift key will navigate you to the previous column (towards the left cell).
• Enter key: The Enter key will move you to the next row. Or to the next cell on the bottom.
• Enter key + Shift key: Press Enter + Shift key combination to navigate you to the previous row (upwards).

This is the basic use of the Tab and Enter keys in Excel.

In a nutshell, the tab key is used for horizontal movement in Excel (left or right). Whereas, the Enter key is used for vertical movement within Excel (upwards or downwards).

How to Indent in Excel

Not in Excel but generally if you use the Tab key, you’d see it is used to ndent a word or a sentence (is pressed by placing the cursor behind the word). Or, otherwise to add an extended space.

However, note that the Tab key just doesn’t work like that in Excel.

If you want to indent the text added within a cell in Excel or add an extended space in Excel, the Tab key won’t help you with that 📝

As soon as you press the tab key, it will move you to the next cell instead.

Although the Tab key doesn’t work to indent the content of cells in Excel, this doesn’t mean you cannot indent in Excel.

Excel offers a distinguished tool to support indentation within cells. Check this out here.

Step 1) Select the cell containing the content that you want to indent.

Step 2) Go to the Home tab > Alignment group > Indentation button.

Step 3) Pressing the right indent button will indent the contents of the cell towards the right once.

So, you can click it as many times as you want the text indented.

This works exactly how the tab button would work in other apps to indent text 🥂

How to Add a Line Break in Excel

When you input data in cells in Excel, you’d often want the text to be split into two lines.

Normally, in other text-based applications, to add a line break and start a new line, we press the “Enter” key. However, as is the case with the Tab key, pressing the Enter key in Excel won’t add a line break.

Instead, it will navigate you to the next cell towards the right 👉

Fortunately, it’s not like you cannot add a line break in Excel in its entirety. You can add a line break in Excel by following these steps.

Step 1) Activate the cell where you want to add a line break.

Step 2) Take your cursor to the point where the line break is to be added.

Step 3) Press the Alt key + Enter key.

Step 4) This will add a line break at this point.

The Alt key + Enter key shortcut works to insert line breaks within a cell in Excel.

Moving through an Excel book

This section is a treasure for keyboard wizards who want to navigate around through their Excel sheet and workbook (as a whole) in a jiffy 🚴‍♀️

In addition to the Tab key shortcuts discussed above, here are some very handy Excel keyboard shortcuts to move around a sheet:

• Arrow keys: Move selection cell in the direction of the arrow (up, down, left, or right) for once.

• Ctrl + Arrow keys: Jumps to the edge of the data region in the direction of the arrow (bypassing any empty cells in between).

If there is no data in the previous or next cells at all, it jumps to the first cell (ctrl +left arrow key) or last cell (ctrl + right arrow key) in the row. Or the column (with ctrl and up or down arrow key).

This helps you quickly navigate across large data sets or sheets. For example, pressing Ctrl + Right Arrow will move the cell selection to the last filled cell in that row. Or to the last cell of that row if all the next cells are empty 💡

• Ctrl + Pg Up key: Takes you to the previous sheet in the workbook (before the currently active sheet).

• Ctrl + Pg Dn key: Takes you to the next sheet in the workbook (after the currently active sheet).

Try out these shortcuts to sail around your worksheets seamlessly.

Conclusion

Efficient Excel navigation is a very impressive (and essential skill) skill. It makes you look like a pro, if anything, and speeds up your work insanely.

By understanding and utilizing the right shortcuts and techniques, you can achieve better productivity and enhanced efficiency in your Microsoft Excel jobs. In the above tutorial, we’ve seen how you can use the Tab key to move around cells in your Excel sheet 💪

Also, we have uncovered ways how you can indent text within a cell and, line breaks to it and other handy shortcuts to navigate through your Excel workbook.

Since the key to proficiency in Excel is practicing, make sure you keep doing that and check out the following Excel tutorials by Spreadsheeto to continue learning.

• F4 shortcut not working in Excel? How to fix it!
• How to Refresh a Pivot Table in Excel (Step-by-Step)
• How to Unhide Sheets in Excel: Step-by-Step (Unhide Tabs)