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◆ Formatting · drill · Excel Keyboard Fluency track

Clean the paste

Select the whole range, format once — Alt H chords work a block, not a cell.
The comp sheet came back from the data room and someone pasted it straight onto the page. The title and headers carry no weight, the metric headers hug the wrong side of their columns, the figures are bare black numbers, the notes run clear across the page, and the columns the paste landed in are too narrow for what is in them. Clean it to the house look before it goes in the book — and watch what the commas do to a narrow column.
train this drill → par 27s · optimal 25 keys · keyboard only · free
The shortcuts in this drill
Alt walks: tap Alt, release, then the letters in sequence — each key steps one ribbon menu. On a Mac, tap and use the same letters (KeyTips, Excel 2024+).
Ctrl+B⌘B on macBold
Bold marks structure: titles, total rows, anything the reviewer’s eye should land on first.
Alt h a r⌥ h a r on macAlign right
Right-align headers over number columns so they sit flush with their digits.
Ctrl+1⌘1 on macOpen the Format Cells dialog
The master formatting dialog — number formats, alignment, borders in one place when a ribbon walk would take longer.
Alt h f c⌥ h f c on macFont color
Font color: blue inputs, black formulas — the oldest convention in banking models, still enforced.
Alt h w⌥ h w on macWrap text
Wrap long header text instead of widening the column — the layout survives.
Alt h o i⌥ h o i on macAutofit column width
The ##### fix: autofit the column to its widest entry in three keys.
Ctrl+S⌘S on macSave
The optimal line
the par-setting sequence, straight through:
title + header row A2:E2ctrl+b · metric headers B2:D2alt h a r · figures B3:D7alt h k + alt h 9 ×2 (or ctrl+1 n in one move) · alt h f c → Blue · notes E3:E7alt h w · alt h o i · ctrl+s
More Formatting drills
Typeset the memo
Bold the header, unbold the imposter, italicize the memos, flag the discontinued line in r
The decimals pass
Take a comps page to the house decimal standard, and find the cell somebody hand-formatted
Set the alignment
Center, left, right — and a long title centered across the table, never merged
Fix the squeezed columns
A print page nobody can read — fit the labels to their content, hold the quarter block to
← Ruling Pass House Style → all 74 drills
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