Keyboard Shortcuts to Change Excel Cell Format

Microsoft Excel has many formats for entering content inside a cell. By default, when you open a workbook, all cells are available in “General” format. Excel will accept text content inside cells without any errors. However, when you enter number inside a “General” formatted cell, you will see a validation error. Here are simple shortcuts to change cell format in Excel quickly.

Cell Validation Error

In an Excel worksheet, cell formatting option is available in the ribbon or menu. Below is the screenshot of Excel Microsoft 365 version on Mac – you can change the format under “Home” tab by clicking on the format dropdown box.

You need to change the desired format before typing the content. Otherwise, Excel will show an error with a green mark on the top left corner within the cell. You can hover over the cell and click on the warning symbol to see more details. For example, when you type number inside a general cell and press enter, you will see “Number Stored As Text” warning.

Therefore, it is necessary to change the cell format before you enter the content inside a cell.

Shortcuts to Quickly Change Cell Format

However, every time navigating through menu or ribbon and changing the cell format is a time consuming task. In order not to waste time, Excel provides some shortcut keys for changing cell format.

Good part is these keyboard shortcuts for changing cell format will work both on Windows and Mac Excel version.

Example Usage

Below is an example, how the cell value 123 will change when you apply these shortcuts and change the format:

Currency, number of decimals, date / time formats will be applied as per your settings.