Formula Friday – Excel Tip, How To Activate The Excel Formula Bar Directly From Your Keyboard To Quickly Edit Formulas.


Hello, welcome back to another blog post in my 2021 series. I want to share with you a favourite Excel tip of mine.  I  think you will like this Excel formula bar tip. This Excel tip is very useful if you avoid using your mouse for formula work as much as possible in Excel.

The Excel formula bar, located just above the work area, shows either a cells value or a formula, whichever is typed into the selected cell in your Excel worksheet.  Ordinarily,  to edit a formula, you would click directly into the formula bar.   I do find this kind of annoying, but no more do you need to use a mouse to click into the cell, then edit your formulas.  All you need to do is hit F2!

Activating The Excel Formula Bar.

This will instruct Excel that you want to edit the contents of a cell. This will normally result in the expansion of the cell to allow you to edit its contents directly. You can see the change of mode by hitting the F2 shortcut key we can toggle between the Edit and Enter mode.

Excel formula bar

Now, if edit mode is not responding to the F2 shortcut then change the setting below. This allows the formula bar tip to work.

  • File
  • Options
  • Advanced
  • Editing options
  • Tick Allow editing directly in cells
excel formula bar

So could this be the most useful Excel shortcut key, what do you think?.  Let me know in the comments below. This formula bar tip has to be one of my favourite Excel Tips of all time. Do you want more Excel tips?. Don’t forget to subscribe to my YouTube Channel, Twitter feed and Facebook Page for more free Tips every week.

All Formula Friday Excel Tips.

Learn Excel With Our Excel Online Courses

Even more Excel Tips!.

Barbara

Barbara is an experienced data analyst with over 20 years of experience. Author of the How To Excel At Excel Top 50 Excel tips Ebook, YouTuber and Excel Blogger.

Recent Posts