Let’s take a look. The most basic way to move content in Excel is to select one or more cells, then click the “cut” button on the ribbon, move to another location, and click the “paste” button on the ribbon. When you cut content, notice that Excel doesn’t immediately remove the content. Instead, the cut data is highlighted by a moving dashed line—sometimes called “marching ants.” This indicates that the cut information is on the clipboard and ready to move to a new location. If you decide you don’t want to move the data after all, just press the escape key and the marching ants will disappear. In addition to the buttons on the ribbon, you can use the keyboard shortcuts for cut and paste. Control-x to cut; control-v to paste. You can also right-mouse click to cut and paste. Finally, you can move entire rows and columns using cut and paste. Just make sure to select the column letter or the row number to get a complete selection. Because columns and rows are very big objects, be sure you don’t accidentally overwrite important information elsewhere on the worksheet.
Dave Bruns
Hi - I’m Dave Bruns, and I run Exceljet with my wife, Lisa. Our goal is to help you work faster in Excel. We create short videos, and clear examples of formulas, functions, pivot tables, conditional formatting, and charts.
