Quick Tip

Quickly find and select the cells you want, including named ranges and cells

Tired of navigating to the cells you want with the mouse?

This can be especially trying when you need to select cells that many rows or columns away from the current view, or on a different worksheet tab… or even in a different workbook file!

To quickly get to the cells you want, just use this keyboard shortcut:

Keyboard shortcut to go to cells in Excel

Use this keyboard shortcut to quickly go to the cells you want:

Action	Keyboard shortcut
Go to cells	F5 or Ctrl + G

This shortcut opens the “Go To” dialog, which looks like this:

Go to named range or recent cell

You can use the “Go To” dialog to go to a recent cell in the list or a named range, like this:

The list of destinations should include all available named ranges. If the list is blank, check that you have first defined the range name (such as by using the Name Manager).

Difference between Go To and Select

There are subtle differences between using Go To and just selecting cells normally:

• Go To adds the destination to the list of recent cell ranges, which then becomes available to select in the Go To dialog. This can be useful if switching between several cells or ranges that are visually far apart, such as when checking the links or formulas in a spreadsheet.
• When automating Excel (such as with macros or VBA), Select will select cells whether or not they are visible, whereas Go To will navigate to them as well as select them. For example, if the cells found are on a different tab, Go To will switch to that tab.