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The microsoft online documentation for Desktop Excel misleadingly cites the same shortcuts for French and English even when they have explicitly chosen to change them for linguistics reasons (Ctrl+R and Ctrl+D are Ctrl+D and Ctrl+B in French to match the translation of "right" and "down") or these shortcut are literally impossible to use on a French Keyboard.

The offending shortcut is the purported (at this point I'm not even confident this is an actual shortcut) [corrected: Ctrl+Shift+"] to paste the content from the immediately above cell, but on French keyboards the equivalent keystrokes already do other things (the quote marks is not a direct key on french keyboards):

  • French-Canadian QWERTY (which I use): Ctrl+Shift+2, which seems to be doing something related to cell widths (certainly not Bold formatting, as Microsoft somehow claims).
  • AZERTY: Ctrl+Shift+3, which I have NO idea what it's actually assigned to other than it gives me a "no corresponding cells" error message and Microsoft has the gall to pretend it's an alternative for Italics.

Normally I would use the shortcut customizer to check what the keystroke is... but that is only available in Microsoft Word. Does the [corrected: Ctrl+Shift+"] shortcut exists at all in the French version of Excel and if so what is it?

Edit

While the problem is stated accurately, I have badly misstated the intended shortcut. That shortcut, in English, is in fact ctrl+SHIFT+". This is even worse, however, because it is literally impossible to type the quote marks without the shift key in French.

The shortcut is labelled in English as "Copy the value from the cell above the active cell into the cell or the formula bar" and listed as Ctrl+Shift+Straight quotation mark (").

(I have also fixed my use of "Maj" for "Shift" in the above post. It's the same key, but I should obviously use its english name here)

asked Sep 15 at 19:13
6
  • Re Word: What is the shortcut in Word? Does the shortcut that works in Word work or not work in Excel? Are you running any Macros or keyboard utilities that may have hijacked this? Have you explorer other reasons besides the combo is different? Commented Sep 15 at 20:21
  • @music2myear This shortcut does not exist in Word. Other than having the bad luck of having a workplace install in french (so no I cannot just reinstall in a different language), I have nothing whatsoever that would interfere with the shortcut other than the fact my keyboard does not have a dedicated key for quotation marks, so I have to assume that if this shortcut was implemented properly, they made sure to change it something a nonenglish keyboard can actually type. Commented Sep 16 at 2:45
  • When talking of keyboard shortcuts, the convention is to use "key plus key". When you say only "CTRL +" do you mean "CTRL + +"? If so, it may be worthwhile to edit your post to clarify this. Use the code <kbd>CTRL</kbd> + <kbd>+</kbd> to even make cool button visuals to make it even more clear. And then, also, you're looking for the keyboard command for filling/pasting from the above cells? In my English (US) version of Excel CTRL and the + key do not paste from the above cells either. Perhaps a feature or method needs to be enabled first? What version of Word? Have you asked your IT dept? Commented Sep 16 at 13:15
  • Ok, I've read through the MS link you sent, and I'm more confused now. Please EDIT your post. Clearly state the specific command you're trying to find, your justification for why you believe it exists (you say above you don't even know if it DOES exist), and your research to this point (if it's not in MS' documentation for Excel then what leads you to believe it does exist)? I don't think this has anything to do with French vs English, based on what you've told us so far. Just please do what you can to make your question clear. Very clear. Commented Sep 16 at 13:20
  • I believe that when you hit the CTRL key, the SHIFT stops becoming a modifier for whatever other key you hit next. i.e. CTRL+SHIFT+2 is not the same as CTRL+" even though SHIFT+2 is " Commented Sep 16 at 13:29

1 Answer 1

1

While fumbling around the shortcut for bold text(1), I stumbled across the answer completely by chance:

Turns out it's Ctrl+B

I had previously encountered that as a different changed shortcut for Ctrl+D (Fill Down). Turns out that French Excel uses the same shortcut for both functions, but neither changes are documented in the Microsoft shortcut list that I linked to.

(1) A recurring problem as that shortcut is changed to Ctrl+G by Microsoft in French, but basically no one else changes shortcut based on language (even Microsoft is not consistent about it!).

answered Sep 16 at 18:37

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