Excel Alt Key Shortcuts on Mac: A Printable Cheat Sheet for Windows Switchers

If you moved from Windows to a Mac, you probably noticed it on day one: you tap Alt in Excel and nothing lights up. The ribbon shortcuts you used for years, like Alt H V V to paste values, simply are not there.

Why the Alt shortcuts disappear on a Mac

On Windows, pressing Alt puts a small letter over every ribbon tab. Press H for Home, then V for Paste, then V again for Values, and you have pasted values without touching the mouse. Excel for Mac does not have this system. It remaps some actions to other keys and leaves many with no keyboard shortcut at all, so switching often means relearning Excel.

Option is the new Alt

With the Mac Excel Shortcuts app running, the Option key (⌥) takes the place of Alt. Alt H V V becomes ⌥ H V V. You press the keys one after another, exactly as you would on Windows, so your muscle memory carries over.

The sequences worth learning first

If you only learn a handful, start with these. The left side is the Windows shortcut; the right side is what you press on a Mac.

• Paste Values: Alt E S V becomes ⌥ E S V

• AutoFit Column Width: Alt H O I becomes ⌥ H O I

• Wrap Text: Alt H W becomes ⌥ H W

• Merge and Center: Alt H M C becomes ⌥ H M C

• Insert Row: Alt H I R becomes ⌥ H I R

• Toggle Filter: Alt A T becomes ⌥ A T

• Sort A to Z: Alt A S A becomes ⌥ A S A

• Freeze Panes: Alt W F F becomes ⌥ W F F

How to read a sequence

The first letter after Alt picks the ribbon tab: H is Home, A is Data, M is Formulas, R is Review, and W is View. Each letter after that is one step down the menu. Once you see that every sequence is a path through the ribbon, they become much easier to remember than a list of random keys.

Two printable layouts

Our free Excel shortcuts cheat sheet comes in two layouts. The page layout lists every shortcut by ribbon tab in two columns: Windows Excel on the left, and what you press on a Mac on the right. The keyboard layout draws a MacBook keyboard at real size and labels the keys for each step of an Alt sequence, so you can print it and stick it beside your screen or on your keyboard.

Print at 100 percent, not Fit to page, so the keys line up. A 50 mm ruler is printed on every keyboard sheet so you can check the scale.

Next steps

Download the cheat sheet, keep it next to your keyboard for a week, and you will find the sequences stick fast. When you want them to actually work in Excel, Mac Excel Shortcuts runs the Windows sequences on your Mac, and it is free to try for 7 days or 10 shortcuts.