Work faster with a searchable keyboard shortcuts and Excel formulas cheat sheet
Reaching for the mouse to do something you do fifty times a day is one of the quietest time-wasters in office work. This cheat sheet fixes that. It is a fast, searchable reference for the keyboard shortcuts in the apps most people live in — Microsoft Excel, Word and PowerPoint, plus Windows itself, Google Chrome, Gmail and VS Code. For Excel it goes further, adding a complete list of the most-used formulas and functions with ready-to-copy examples and a separate Formula Ideas view that shows real-world use cases. Everything is on one page, so you stop hunting through help articles and just find the key combo you need.
It is built for anyone who would rather keep their hands on the keyboard — students writing assignments, office staff building reports, analysts wrangling spreadsheets, support agents flying through Gmail, and developers working in VS Code. There is no signup and nothing to install. Pick an app, type what you want to do, and the answer is in front of you in a second. Click any key combo or formula to copy it, and when you want a permanent copy, download the whole sheet as a PDF.
How to use it
- Tap the app you want at the top (Excel, Word, PowerPoint, Windows, Chrome, Gmail or VS Code).
- For Excel, use the toggle to switch between Shortcuts, Formulas and Ideas.
- Search to filter instantly — type "save", "paste", "VLOOKUP", "screenshot" or any action.
- Click any key combo, formula or recipe to copy it straight to your clipboard.
- Toggle the Xnipertools watermark on or off, then download a Colorful PDF to keep or share, or a print-ready black-and-white PDF that saves ink.
Why keyboard shortcuts are worth learning
Shortcuts feel like a small thing, but the seconds add up. Moving your hand to the mouse, finding the pointer, aiming at a button and clicking takes a couple of seconds; a key combo takes a fraction of one — and it keeps your eyes on your work instead of on a menu. Across a full day of saving files, copying cells, switching tabs and formatting text, that easily adds up to real minutes saved and a lot less mental friction. The trick is not to memorise everything at once. Pick the five or six actions you repeat most — usually save, copy, paste, undo and switch window — and use the shortcut every time until it becomes automatic. Once those are muscle memory, add a few more. This sheet is meant to sit open beside your work so you can glance at it whenever you forget one.
Excel formulas, explained with examples
The Excel Formulas view is grouped the way you actually think about a problem: math and basic totals, statistical functions, logical tests, text handling, lookup and reference, date and time, and financial calculations. Each entry shows the function name, a working example like =VLOOKUP(A1,D:E,2,FALSE), and a one-line description of what it returns. That matters because a formula's name rarely tells you how to write it — seeing the real syntax, with sample cell references, is what lets you adapt it to your own sheet. The list covers the everyday workhorses (SUM, AVERAGE, IF, COUNTIF, SUMIF) right through to the modern lookup family — VLOOKUP, HLOOKUP, XLOOKUP and the flexible INDEX/MATCH combination — so you can pick the right approach for the job.
Formula Ideas: when to use each one
Knowing a function exists is different from knowing when to reach for it. That is what the Ideas view is for. Instead of listing functions, it lists tasks — "get a price for an item", "count how many times something appears", "split a full name into first and last", "flag overdue dates", "list the unique values", "work out a percentage of the total" — and gives you the exact formula plus a plain-English note on how it works. A few are worth keeping handy: use =IFERROR(A1/B1,0) to hide ugly #DIV/0! errors, lock a reference with dollar signs like =SUM($B$2:B2) to build a running total that survives dragging, and remember that newer functions such as XLOOKUP, UNIQUE and SEQUENCE need Excel 365 or a recent version. It is the practical "how do I actually do this in Excel" guide, and it exports as its own PDF too.
A note on Gmail, VS Code and Mac keys
Two app-specific things are worth knowing. Gmail shortcuts are switched off by default — open Gmail, go to Settings → See all settings → General, set Keyboard shortcuts to on and save, after which keys like c to compose and e to archive will work. The VS Code keys here are shown for Windows and Linux; if you are on a Mac, swap Ctrl for Cmd and Alt for Option and almost everything maps across. The same Mac substitution applies to the Office and browser shortcuts too.
Free, private and always handy
This tool runs entirely in your browser. The shortcuts and formulas are not fetched from a server, and the PDF is generated on your own device — nothing you do here is uploaded or stored anywhere. That makes it safe to use on a work machine and quick to load even on a slow connection. Bookmark the page, or print the black-and-white PDF and pin it next to your desk, and you have a reliable reference that is always one glance away.