iWork '09: The Missing Manual

Navigating Table Cells

Like pretty much everything on your Mac, you can select table cells by pointing and clicking with your mouse. When you start facing down hundreds or thousands of cells in your spreadsheet, however, clicking to edit each one turns into serious exercise. Rather than developing an over-muscled mouse arm, put your energy into committing some crucial keyboard shortcuts to memory. Once you’ve selected a table cell, you can move all over your table without lifting a finger from your keyboard.

The Tab and arrow keys are your greatest allies, letting you hop to the cell next door. Click Tab to select the cell to the right; select Shift-Tab to move to the left. When you’re working at the cell level, you can similarly use the arrow keys to select the cell in the corresponding direction—up, down, left, or right. (See the box “Where Does the Arrow Point?” to sharpen your arrow skills.)

UP TO SPEED: Where Does the Arrow Point?

The range of your keyboard’s arrows changes depending on your current selection level. When you have a cell selected at the cell level, the arrow keys bump you over to select the next cell (left, right, up, or down). When the cell is selected at the text level, however, the arrows instead move you around inside the cell.

When you’re motoring through your cells for the first time, for example, you can just use the Tab and arrow keys to move to each one, type your data and then tab or arrow to the next cell. Even though you’re typing text into the cell, ...