How to jump to the last row with data in Microsoft Excel or Google Spreadsheets

[harlan4096]

Tools like Microsoft Excel, LibreOffice Calc, or Google Spreadsheets are widely used both in the business world and also at home. If you work with large tables regularly, you may wonder if there is a way to quickly jump to the last row with data in a spreadsheet. Similarly, you may wonder whether you can jump to the first row with data, or the last column cell with data in a row.

A check of the available buttons and menus yields no available option to do that. While you may know that you can navigate in a spreadsheet using the cursor keys, activating these moves the cursor to the next cell only. Scrolling may be faster with the mouse, but if you have to a large table with thousands of cells or rows, you are going to spend some time scrolling, still.

Good news: there is a faster way. Even better, it should work in most spreadsheet applications.  Note that you need to hold down the modifier key, in this case the Ctrl-key (or Cmd-key on Mac).

Here are the keyboard shortcuts that you need:

• Ctrl-Down -- The shortcut moves the cursor to the last row with data before the first blank row that is encountered; this may be the last row in the table ideally, but only if there are not any blank rows in the table.
  
• Ctrl-Up -- The shortcut moves the cursor to the first row with data before a blank row.
  

Ctrl-Down works well if there are no blank cells in the table. If you have lots of blank cells, you need to activate the shortcut multiple times. It is still faster than using the Down-key or scrolling but not the fastest option.

• Ctrl-End -- Moves the cursor to the last right-most cell of the table.
  
• Ctrl-Home -- Moves the cursor to the first left-most cell of the table.
  

Ctrl-Home works all the time whereas Ctrl-End may jump too far down and to the right so that you may readjust the position again after the jump has been made.

• End -- Jumps to the last cell of the row with data.
  
• Home -- Jumps to the first cell of the active row.
  
• Arrow Keys -- Moves one cell or row.
  

Here is a combination of shortcuts that will work all the time: use Ctrl-End to jump all the way down, then Home to jump to the first cell of that row, and then Ctrl-Up to the last cell of the table with data.

Ctrl-Down is faster if there are no blank rows in the table, but if there are lots of them, the above combination may be faster.

Now You: Have other spreadsheet tips? Let us know in the comments!
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