Google Sheets Shortcuts for Excel Users: What Carries Over and What Does Not
Many Excel habits work in Google Sheets without any change, and a few do not. The ones that fail are the ones that cost you time, because the keys you pressed from memory do nothing or do something else. This guide separates the two groups, using the shortcuts printed on the free Google Sheets cheat sheet, which lists 24 for PC and Mac.
PC here means Windows and Chrome OS, which is how Google’s help page groups them. Cmd is the Command key on a Mac.
Keys that carry over
The basics are the same. Undo is Ctrl+Z (Cmd+Z on Mac). Select all is Ctrl+A. Shift+Space selects the current row in both programs. Fill down is Ctrl+D in both, and it copies the top cell of your selection into the cells below it.
A few more match on PC and Mac inside Sheets itself, which helps when you work on two machines. Select column is Ctrl+Space on both, and Show all formulas is Ctrl+~ on both. Redo is Ctrl+Y on PC and Cmd+Y on Mac.
Keys that look familiar and are not
Paste is where the habit breaks first. In Excel, pasting only the values goes through Paste Special, which is Ctrl+Alt+V on Windows. Sheets has a direct shortcut, Ctrl+Shift+V on PC and Cmd+Shift+V on Mac, that pastes values only. I’d learn it before anything else on this list.
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Find and replace is Ctrl+H on PC, but Cmd+Shift+H on Mac. Jumping to the start of the sheet is Ctrl+Home on PC and Cmd+Fn+Left on Mac. The Excel cheat sheet notes that a MacBook needs the Fn key to reach Home and End, and the same applies here.
More keys worth learning
These five are on the Sheets card and are worth knowing from the start:
- Ctrl+Enter fills the selected range with what you typed. On a Mac, it is Cmd+Enter.
- Ctrl+Alt+= inserts rows above the selection, with rows selected. The Mac version is Cmd+Option+=. Delete rows is the same keys with a minus sign.
- Ctrl+Alt+9 hides the selected row, and Cmd+Option+9 does it on a Mac.
- Ctrl+Shift+Enter turns a formula into an array formula, and Cmd+Shift+Enter does it on a Mac.
- Ctrl+\ clears formatting, and Cmd+\ does it on a Mac. The backslash is easy to miss in a proportional font, which is why the PDF prints the keys in monospace.
Formula references
F4 switches a reference between absolute and relative on PC. On a Mac it is Fn+F4.
The formulas carry over too, with new argument names
The other half of the sheet is formulas, and the move from Excel is gentler there. XLOOKUP, VLOOKUP, SUMIFS, COUNTIFS, IF and IFERROR are all on Google’s function list. What changes is the vocabulary. Excel’s VLOOKUP reads VLOOKUP(lookup_value, table_array, col_index_num, [range_lookup]). Google’s reads VLOOKUP(search_key, range, index, [is_sorted]). The four slots hold the same four jobs under different names, so the tooltip is what looks unfamiliar.
XLOOKUP works in Sheets. Google lists its missing_value argument without brackets, but in our test the formula also worked with that argument left out, and it returned #N/A for a missing key.
Sheets also has a card of list tools: QUERY, FILTER, SORT, UNIQUE and ARRAYFORMULA. QUERY takes a query written in Google’s query language, so one formula can select columns, group rows and add them up, as in =QUERY(A1:C7, “select A, sum(C) group by A”, 1). That formula uses A1:C7 on purpose, since a longer range with empty rows added a blank group to the result in our test.
Check against Google’s page
Every shortcut on the sheet was read from Google’s help page Keyboard shortcuts for Google Sheets, in its PC and Mac sections, on October 25, 2026. Google notes that some shortcuts might not work for all languages or keyboards. If a key does nothing on your machine, that page is the first place to look.
If you move between the two programs
The practical approach is to print both lists and compare the rows you use most. The free Google Sheets cheat sheet puts 24 shortcuts for PC and Mac on the top half of one landscape page, with 20 formulas below them. The Excel shortcuts cheat sheet has the Excel side in the same layout. Both are PDFs in US Letter and A4, and neither needs an email or an account.
Start with Ctrl+Shift+V, and add the rest as you reach for them.
