Excel – Move the contents of a cell in Excel with keyboard (not cut/paste)

microsoft excel

Is it possible to move the contents of a cell (eg from A1 to B4) in Excel using the keyboard (the arrows) without using cut and paste? Something similar when using the mouse and drag in the edge of a cell, but with the keyboard.

Best Answer

When cell dragging is recorded as a macro, the resulting VB code uses select, cut, copy and paste, depening on whether ctrl is used to duplicate, and whether alt is used to move to another sheet. Also, dragging a cell clears the paste buffer. Both of these seem to indicate that cell dragging really uses cut-copy-paste behind-the-scenes, so it's unlikely you can move the contents of a cell without using cut and paste, even if you use the mouse.

Related Solutions

Excel: Move cell contents to comment

The following VBA code will move the text values of the selected cells into the comments. It will only work if there arent any existing commnets

Sub Test()
    For i = 1 To Selection.Rows.Count
        For j = 1 To Selection.Columns.Count
            Selection.Cells(i, j).AddComment (Selection.Cells(i, j).Text)
        Next
    Next
End Sub

Excel – MS Excel: How to use format painter with just the keyboard

Update (November 2020): This Method does not work in the current version of Excel, as it will copy both format and content of the origin cell. Unless you are formatting empty cells, I recommend using the method of WireGuy instead: Use F5 or Ctrl+G to navigate to the target cell.

Original Answer: It is quite cumbersome, but after you undo (Ctrl + z) formatting the neighbouring cell, you can move around the cursor with the keyboard arrows and press enter finally to paint the correct cell.

If you hold down shift while navigating (before pressing enter) you can paint multiple (adjacent) cells at once.

Best Answer

Related Solutions

Excel: Move cell contents to comment

Excel – MS Excel: How to use format painter with just the keyboard

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