Excel Shortcuts Investment Banking: Quick Tips

You’ll get a quick, but very powerful, tip on how to optimize your Excel setup with the Quick Access Toolbar (QAT) and custom shortcuts in this tutorial. These tips will save you a ton of time when creating valuations, organizing data, and doing any formatting exercise.

"Financial Modeling Training And Career Resources For Aspiring Investment Bankers"

Shortcuts Introduced:

These are all BUILT-IN shortcuts:

Alt, T, O: Options Menu
Alt, H, FC: Font Color
Alt, H, FS: Font Size
Alt, H, H: Fill Color
Alt, H, A, C: Center
Alt, H, B: Borders
Alt, H, O, I: AutoFit Column Width
Alt, H, O, W: Column Width
Alt, H, 0: Increase Decimal Places
Alt, H, 9: Decrease Decimal Places

These are the NEW shortcuts you can create via the Quick Access Toolbar:

Alt, 1: Font Color
Alt, 2: Font Size
Alt, 3: Fill Color
Alt, 4: Center
Alt, 5: Borders
Alt, 6: AutoFit Column Width
Alt, 7: Column Width
Alt, 8: Increase Decimal Places
Alt, 9: Decrease Decimal Places

Lesson Outline:

Many Excel shortcuts that you use repeatedly when creating valuations, models and when formatting data are cumbersome to enter.

Something as simple as changing the font color takes 4 keystrokes – Alt, H, F, C – if you use the built-in method for it.

Other common commands such as alignment, fill colors, borders, and column widths also take 3-4 keystrokes.

A more efficient alternative is to set up the Quick Access Toolbar (QAT) so that you can access the most common commands with shortcuts like Alt, 1 instead.

You can either import our file (see the link below under RESOURCES) or go to the Options menu (Alt, T, O) and then the Quick Access Toolbar tab, and create the menu yourself.

We recommend setting “Font Color” in position #1, followed by Font Size, Fill Color, Center, Borders, AutoFit Column Width, Column Width, and Increase and Decrease Decimal places.

These are some of the most frequently used commands in Excel, and you’ll save a ton of time with the new, shorter versions.

A command like AutoFit Column Width that used to take 4 keystrokes now takes only 2 (Alt, 6) with this approach.

You might realize 30-40% time savings when working in Excel if you use this full set of shortcuts. They’re especially useful for formatting and analyzing data and doing the initial setup in financial models.

RESOURCES:

[Mike-uzhs]

Not only are your videos extremely well made, your presentation style is simple and easy to follow along.

[tomcruiseinriskybusiness]

If I could give this video 10 thumbs up I would. Thanks for the helpful shortcuts!

[gmtwows]

How can I have that bright blue color you have in some cells? Mine is all faded and definitely looks worse.

[mlfree]

Thanks for the video. Can you tell me the blue pen you use at 2:50.

[andrewk.]

“or even worse, a former consultant” lol

[MartinBjorkvall]

What is your opinion/experience on using macros for formatting? Especially for font and fill color it could be quicker.

[nickfasciano]

Thanks for this video, your content is great! I've always wondered why using Office themes is so uncommon to do a lot of the heavy formatting legwork. Any ideas?

[vatosiranos]

Hey buddy, thx for ur introduction. I want to know is it only possible for excel 2016 for windows or is it also possible for excel 2011 for mac, too? I tested it about I can not make it like. "For example with Alt 1 for me is it only possible to get one color and not to choose between the colors".

[bomber]

why cant u record a macro for it... just select the cells and run a predefined steps..

[Justin]

Great videos. How well does this apply to Macs?

[jazzista]

Great idea. Never thought of adding the shortcuts in the QAT. Beautiful professional spreadsheets. How do you create the outputs: do you use formulas or do you use the excel cubic functions to grab the values from a data set?

[markmuiruri]

I am using a Macbook and I am having trouble with the shortcuts. Do you have Mac excel shortcuts?

[tommywei]

can you do a video on microsofts acquisition of linkedin? like a merger model tutorial? please!! it'd be sooo cool.

[bettyq]

Which excel version are you using here?

[yihaozhou]

8 interns and former consultants disliked the video