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Question About Locking Cells in Excel on Mac

Anonymous
2020-04-09T04:18:04+00:00

Dear Community,

Hope everyone stays safe and healthy at home these days!

I am no exception and have been working from home since Tuesday and accessing my office PC via LogMeIn. As my personal laptop is a Mac Pro, it takes lots of getting used to and gives so much frustration while having to use the Mac version Excel. I use Vlookup for my works and sometimes I need to lock cells for the reference array, I know on a PC the shortcut is F4, but what about it for Mac please? I did some research online but the ones such as command + T and command + 1 didn't work. I will appreciate it a lot if you could tell me the right one for locking cells.

Best regards,

Tony J

Microsoft 365 and Office | Excel | For home | Windows

Locked Question. This question was migrated from the Microsoft Support Community. You can vote on whether it's helpful, but you can't add comments or replies or follow the question.

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  1. Bob Jones AKA CyberTaz MVP 435K Reputation points
    2020-04-09T17:59:56+00:00

    I'm not very familiar with LogMeIn but it may be that remote access does not support the use of keyboard shortcuts, especially when dealing with different operating systems & differing keyboard mapping.

    When working on a locally installed version of Mac Excel both Command+T an the F4 key should toggle absolute reference. However, if your Mac has a condensed keyboard [such as an Apple Wireless] you may have to use fn+F4 unless you make a change in System Preferences... Apple has defaulted the "F" [as in Function] keys to perform system operations (screen brightness, volume, etc.) rather than acting as regular function keys.

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  2. Bob Jones AKA CyberTaz MVP 435K Reputation points
    2020-04-09T16:20:33+00:00

    It sounds to me like you are not referring to locking cells but are attempting to create Absolute References in your formula. I'm also guessing that you may be using the Formula Builder. If so, none of the keyboard methods will apply absolute references, you have to type the $s yourself. The shortcuts only work when entering directly into the worksheet.

    If I'm wrong please provide a more complete & accurate step-by-step description of what you are attempting to do, how you're going about it, what you expect & what occurs instead. It also would be good to know the present Version of your Office software as indicated in Excel> About Microsoft Excel in the main menu as well as the release of macOS you're using.

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  3. Anonymous
    2020-04-09T16:55:57+00:00

    Hello Mr. Jones,

    Yes! I was asking about creating Absolute References in my Vlookup formula. Since I work from home these days, I access my office PC via LogMeIn on my Mac Pro, so I have lots of confusion on different keyboard layouts. 

    I had no idea what the F4 key was on a Mac keyboard, so I had to turn to the Excel on my Mac Pro. However, either I didn't know what key to press to create Absolute References in masOS Excel!

    The version of my Office software I use is Office 365 Home which I just updated last night, and my macOS is Catalina.

    Thank you very much, Sir!

    Tony

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  4. Jim G 134K Reputation points MVP Volunteer Moderator
    2020-04-09T15:34:20+00:00

    For more information about keyboard shortcuts, click the Help menu and search on Shortcuts, then click Get Hep on Shortcuts.

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  5. Anonymous
    2020-04-09T05:13:30+00:00

    Hi TonyJin! I'm Jen, an independent advisor, would be happy to assist you.

    Here's an article that might help you on how to lock cells in Excel, Office 365 for Mac.

    https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/lock...

    Hope this one helps.

    Regards,

    Jen :)

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