Deleting cell contents vs. clearing cell contents

[petersonk01]

Version: 2008
Operating System: Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard)

I am new to Mac and so more accustomed to using excel on a PC. On PC excel, if you highlight a bunch of cells and hit the delete key, the contents of all cells disappear. In Mac, when you do the same, only the contents of the upper most left hand cell disappear. I have learned from Help that if I go to Edit/clear/all it will delete all the contents of the selected cell group, but is there a way to make it so that hitting delete will do the same? Maybe its a preference? I find it cumbersome to have to go to the menus to accomplish this... ty

 

[JE McGimpsey]

Version: 2008
Operating System: Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard)

I am new to Mac and so more accustomed to using excel on a PC. On PC excel,
if you highlight a bunch of cells and hit the delete key, the contents of all
cells disappear. In Mac, when you do the same, only the contents of the upper
most left hand cell disappear. I have learned from Help that if I go to
Edit/clear/all it will delete all the contents of the selected cell group,
but is there a way to make it so that hitting delete will do the same? Maybe
its a preference? I find it cumbersome to have to go to the menus to
accomplish this... ty

Welcome to Mac! The difference you're seeing is a byproduct of a 25 year
difference between Macs and PCs - The Mac Delete key is by default a
"back delete" where WinTel Del/Delete key is a forward delete.

That said, you have several options:

1) Use your keyboard's Del key instead of Delete. Del is only physically
found on full-size keyboards. On MacBooks, use the fn-Delete combination.

2) Use CTRL-b. Both Del and CTRL-b are default keyboard shortcuts for
Edit/Clear/All. You can find those, and other default keyboard shortcuts
in XL Help ("Excel Keyboard Shortcuts").

3) MacXL, unlike WinXL, lets you assign just about any keyboard shortcut
to just about any command. Choose Tools/Customize Keyboard... In the
Customize Keyboard dialog, choose "Edit" from the Categories dropdown.
Scroll down and select "All" (you'll see Del and Control+B listed), then
enter your new shortcut in the "Press new shortcut key" input box (be
sure to click "Add").