◆ Formatting · drill · Excel Keyboard Fluency track
Clean it to standard
house style is one pass, always the same order — title, inputs, numbers, rules.
The senior drops a raw P&L (profit & loss — the income statement) fragment on your desk: it goes in the book tonight, and it goes in wearing the house look. Bring it to standard — the masthead bold, the six typed inputs in blue (the desk swears one hardcode is hiding in the formula block), the dollar body in commas, both margins reading as percents, the Gross profit and EBITDA totals ruled, and a label column wide enough to actually read. House style is a ritual: same pass, same order, every page.
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.
F5fn F5 on macGo To — jump anywhere by reference
Go To jumps to any reference on the tab — long-distance travel on big pages.
Alt h f c⌥ h f c on macFont color
Font color: blue inputs, black formulas — the oldest convention in banking models, still enforced.
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 b p⌥ h b p on macTop border
Top border above a total row — the accounting ruling that says “this line sums the ones above.”
Alt h o i⌥ h o i on macAutofit column width
The ##### fix: autofit the column to its widest entry in three keys.
The optimal line
the par-setting sequence, straight through:
A1 + headers B2:F2 ctrl+b · inputs blue alt h f c: B3:F3 + buried F9 · body B3:F5 + B7:F10 ctrl+1 n · margins B6:F6 + B11:F11 ctrl+1 p · totals alt h b p ×2 · label col alt h o i · ctrl+s
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