How to Use Your Mac’s Function Keys You may wonder what those function keys running along the top of the keyboard do. These function keys are labeled F1 through F12/F19 (how many you have depends on your keyboard), along with an Escape key and an Eject key that looks like a triangle on top of a horizontal line.
Using the Function keys is one such irritation adjustment. You see, using Excel on a Windows machine allows you to use the function keys, like F1, F2, F4, F5, and Alt+F11, which become second nature. But with a Mac you can’t just press, for example, the F5 function key all by its lonesome self. You’re forced to use the keyboard combination fn+F5. Jan 10, 2015 Function keys in Excel do not work I recently bought a Macbook Air and installed Microsoft Office - for Mac - on it. In Excel, none of the function keys work. I use F2 for editing and F4 for absolute references. The help function states I should use command + T for the latter, but that does not work either.
By default, every Mac has already assigned commands to the F8 through F12 function keys. F8: Displays thumbnail images of all workspaces.
F9: Displays thumbnail images of all windows in a single workspace. F10: Displays all open windows of the currently active program (the program that has one of its windows on “top” of any other windows). F11: Displays the Desktop. F12: Displays Dashboard, which are simple programs such as a calculator or calendar.
![Keys Keys](/uploads/1/2/5/3/125355942/852870046.jpg)
![How To Use Function Keys In Excel For Mac How To Use Function Keys In Excel For Mac](/uploads/1/2/5/3/125355942/388560158.jpg)
The other keys — F1 through F7 and (possibly) F13 through F19 — don’t do much of anything in most programs. Because these function keys aren’t very useful, laptop keyboards and the latest Apple keyboards often assign hardware controls to these seldom-used function keys. For example, pressing the F1 and F2 function keys might change the brightness of the screen, whereas pressing other function keys might adjust the volume. If it turns out that you have a program that actually puts one of these function keys to use — meaning you really want to press the function key as a function key rather than as a way to control hardware stuff like monitor brightness or speaker volume — you must first hold down the Fn key and then press the function key you want. Holding down the Fn key tells your Mac, “Ignore the hardware controls assigned to that function key and just behave like a normal function key.”.