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

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.

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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 of the keyboard, 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 regardless.

Good news: there is a faster way. Even better, it should work in most spreadsheet applications. We have tested these in Microsoft Office, but the keyboard shortcuts should work in these application. Feel free to add information about other spreadsheet applications in the comments below.

Note that you need to hold down the modifier key, in this case the Ctrl-key on Windows and Linux systems, or the Cmd-key on macOS systems. In other words, macOS users need to replace Ctrl with Cmd below.

Here are the keyboard shortcuts that you need:

• Ctrl-Down -- The shortcut moves the cursor to the last row with data, but only if no blank cells are in the column. It works well for columns with data in all cells, and not so well if there are blank cells in the column, as the keyboard shortcut stops before each empty cell in that case whenever it is activated. Microsoft refers to this as moving "to the edge of the current data region in a worksheet".
• Ctrl-Up -- The shortcut moves the cursor to the first row with data before a blank row. It reverse the Ctrl-Down keyboard shortcut, which means that it has the same issues as it regarding empty cells in columns.
• Ctrl-Right -- This shortcut moves the cursor to the rightmost location in a row in the spreadsheet.
• Ctrl-Left -- The keyboard shortcut moves the cursor to the leftmost location in a row in the spreadsheet.

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; this shortcut allows you to jump to the very end of the table quickly.
• Ctrl-Home -- Moves the cursor to the first left-most cell of the table; this shortcut is the reverse of the Ctrl-End shortcut. Instead of moving to the very end of the table, it jumps the cursor to the very beginning of the table.
• PageDown -- moves one screen down in a worksheet.
• PageUp -- moves one screen up in a worksheet.

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.

Other Excel shortcuts for navigation

The spreadsheet applications include additional shortcuts, which more users may be aware of. Regarding jumping around and moving in cells, these are:

• 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 in the direction of the activated key. A tap on the Right-Arrow key moves the cursor one cell to the right.
• Tab -- moves one cell to the right in a worksheet. Moves between unlocked cells in a protected worksheet.
• Shift-Tab -- moves to the previous cell of a worksheet.
• Ctrl-PageDown -- The shortcut switches to the next sheet of a workbook.
• Ctrl-PageUp -- This keyboard shortcut moves to the previous sheet of a workbook.

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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