Top 10 Cheat Sheets to Help You Master Microsoft Office

Microsoft Office is still the most popular office suite used by companies and individuals across the world. These Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote cheat sheets will help boost your productivity and save time when you're working in these programs.

This post is part of Microsoft Office Week, a series at Lifehacker where we offer tips to get started with or master Microsoft Office. Want more? Check out the Office Week tag page.^[1]^[2]

10. Useful Excel Tricks and Features

Excel is packed with features spreadsheet ninjas should know ^[3], but for a visual reference, save or download one or all of these cheat sheets: 8 Great Tools to Make You an Excel Expert ^[4] (includes how to combine cells, use VLOOKUP, and conditional formatting), Excel Tricks That Will Impress Your Boss ^[5] (includes flash fill, pivot tables, and goal seeking), and 8 Time-Saving Excel Shortcuts ^[6] (includes selecting the entire spreadsheet, resizing columns in just two clicks, and inserting the current date). They might sound the same, but they offer different tips and tricks. Excel has so many!

9. See Excel Keyboard Shortcuts for PC and Mac Side-by-Side

Excel's keyboard shortcuts are similar on the PC and Mac, but not always. Some are quite different between the two OSes and others are Windows-only. The side-by-side comparison ^[7] can help if you're moving between the two operating systems.

8. Popular Office Shortcuts

New Horizons offers this printable PDF ^[8] that covers frequently used Word, Excel, Outlook, and PowerPoint keyboard shortcuts. If you fold the paper along the lines and glue the edges, you'll get a pyramid you can place in front of your keyboard for easy reference. (This one might be best for Office newbies.)

7. Quick Reference Cards for Excel Keyboard Shortcuts

Microsoft offers three reference sheets for Excel ^[9], including Ctrl combinations, Function key combinations, and miscellaneous shortcuts. Though it's for Excel 2010, they should apply to other versions of Excel as well.

6. Keyboard Sequences for PowerPoint

You might be familiar with PowerPoint's keyboard shortcuts, but some tasks in PowerPoint require keyboard sequences—pressing two buttons together and then a third. As we've shared previously ^[10], Indezine offers a full list of these powerful sequences for PowerPoint 2016 and earlier, which you can check out here ^[11]. There's a printable e-book version for 2013 a nd earlier there as well.

5. Office for Mac Keyboard Shortcuts

I couldn't find any Office for Mac cheat sheets, but did find this reference PDF ^[12] that's chock full of keyboard shortcuts for Office on the Mac, care of Dean Pirera at OS X Keyboard Shortcuts ^[13]. They should help with any version of Office on the Mac.

4. All the Word Keyboard Shortcuts

Microsoft Word has over 200 keyboard shortcuts. If you'd like to see them all in one place, you can use a macro in Word to generate the list—or just download our PDF or Word version ^[14].

3. Quick Reference Guides from CustomGuide

CustomGuide offers a ton of free cheat sheets for Microsoft Office ^[15], including Access and Office 2011 on the Mac. This might be the motherload of cheat sheets for Office ^[16].

2. Microsoft's Quick Reference Guides

Microsoft offers its own cheat sheets ^[17] or quick reference guides for its Office suite, which you can view online or download as PDFs. They're for Office 2016. MSDN also has the collection of 2013 quick start guides here ^[18].

1. 20 Most Common Keyboard Shortcuts Everyone Should Know

This isn't specific to Microsoft Office, but most of these common keyboard shortcuts can be used in Office as well as other programs, so they're worth memorizing. Here's our cheat sheet, from our guide to using keyboard shortcuts like a ninja ^[19].