Different Cell Editing Modes in MS Excel

Do you often face problem 

while editing a large formula in Excel?

                     or

dealing with values in different cells while preparing charts?

The above two problems might look little different, but their solution lies in knowing one very important feature of MS Excel that few have an idea about - Cell editing modes. 

Have you ever noticed a word written on the bottom left corner of the Excel workbook when you open it for the first time? Or when you start writing in a cell? If you haven't done so, try it now. You will be seeing the words 'Ready' and 'Enter' as shown in the screenshots below. 

They show the particular mode the cell is in. 

One beautiful aspect of MS Excel is that it allows users to have a lot of flexibility when it comes to editing and navigating. Now let’s explore how different cell modes help us in editing the data effectively.

Any excel cell can be in one of the three modes – Ready, Edit and Enter & Point. By default an excel cell is always in ready mode. It allows you to enter any data in any cell. This is the first cell mode. Pressing F2 once will change the mode to Edit and doing so twice will lead to the third mode i.e. Enter & Point. Now let us try to understand these modes with the help of an example.

We have a set of data as shown below

We are in the Ready mode and that has allowed us to input the data in various cells.  Now I wish to edit the formula cell (7.9 %). So I click on that cell and then press F2. 

Now we are in the Edit mode and can make any modifications inside the cell. Remember that pressing arrow key won’t take you to the next cell now. Instead, the cursor will keep moving in the same cell. 

Please note that when you are in Edit or Entry mode, most of the tabs and buttons will be disabled. You can use them only when you go back to Ready mode

Now I want to add the value of one more cell in the formula, but I can’t do it in Edit mode as my movement is restricted to the selected cell only. So I will press F2 once more to move to Enter & Point mode. 

Often, while entering a large formula, we need to navigate the whole sheet to add different values. The third mode, Enter & Point, comes handy in situations like these. Now we are ready to navigate the sheet to add the desired value in the formula. 

As I begin to navigate the sheet, the mode changes to Point from Enter. In this mode the particular data cell that you have ‘pointed to’ is shown in dotted lines. For instance in the above example I wish to insert the value of 8 % in the formula and so I have pointed to that cell. 

There are few important points worth noting here. Remember that many keyboard shortcuts don’t work in edit mode. You need to go back to Ready mode for that to happen. Also, you can return to the default mode of Ready from any mode by hitting Esc key. 

In the next article we will learn about new window utlity