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I have just purchased my first Mac and am having problems with Numbers. I want to jump to the next cell in a given direction that is non-empty (or jump to the end of a contiguous chunk of cells that are non-empty). In Excel (on Windows, anyway), you can do this with Ctrl + An Arrow Key. For example, in this little spreadsheet:

    A    B    C    D
1   x              x
2        x         x
3   x    x    x
4   x    x    x    x

if you selected cell A1 and pressed Ctrl+, you would jump to A3. If, instead, you pressed Ctrl+, you would have gone to D1. If you were in A3 when you pressed Ctrl+, it would take you to C3.

On my Mac, Control + Option + Arrow Key does what I want in Google Spreadsheets. I tried that combination in Numbers, but it adds a row or column, instead.

Surely there is a way to do this in Numbers; I just can't figure it out. Are there keyboard shortcuts like this in Numbers? If not, is there a way to map a keyboard shortcut to this functionality?

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  • 1
    Did you ever figure it out? Commented Nov 7, 2017 at 0:46
  • 3
    Nope. I've actually just gone back to using Excel; there were too many features there that I missed.
    – elixenide
    Commented Nov 7, 2017 at 1:42
  • 2
    @EdCottrell, yep, sometimes Numbers feels like demoware at times, especially compared to Excel.
    – jxramos
    Commented Jan 16, 2019 at 21:34
  • Looks like the real answer is, "Copy the sheet to Google Sheets, then press control / cmd and arrow keys in that". Or install Excel or LibreOffice or similar Commented Feb 12, 2021 at 15:21
  • It is impressive how they add features like smart Youtube video embedding into a Numbers sheet, but haven's still provided a way to navigate to the last valid cell…
    – Dr_Zaszuś
    Commented Nov 21, 2021 at 21:53

1 Answer 1

1

use this AppleScript ▼

--finds next next blank (or non-blank) cell in column
--select starting cell, and run
property searchFor : missing value
tell application "Numbers"
  set t to front document's active sheet's first table whose selection range's class is range
  tell t's selection range
  set currentRow to its first cell's row's address
  set searchCol to its first cell's column's address
  end tell
  tell t's column searchCol
  repeat with i from currentRow + 1 to count cells
  if cell i's value is searchFor then --add not if want to find non-blank
  set t's selection range to cell i
  return
  end if
  end repeat
  end tell
end tell

from →
how do I move/find the next non empty cel… - Apple Community_2019-09-25

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  • 2
    This is not an answer. I’m not asking how to navigate within a sheet programmatically; I’m asking whether there is a keyboard shortcut built-in that does this.
    – elixenide
    Commented Sep 25, 2019 at 3:16
  • No shortcut but this script for now.
    – Alice Shi
    Commented Sep 25, 2019 at 3:21
  • But, you can use some automation software such as Automator or Keyboard Maestro to create a shortcut for that.
    – Alice Shi
    Commented Sep 25, 2019 at 3:28
  • I understand I could do that, but that's still not what I'm asking for.
    – elixenide
    Commented Sep 25, 2019 at 3:30
  • Welcome to Ask Different and thank you for your answer. :) Unfortunately, short answers such as this don't really provide enough detail or context to help many users. I know you've provided a link, but this isn't very helpful as it may no longer work in future. If possible, it'd be good if you could add some more info on how a user would actually go about using the script you're referencing. This will make your answer more self-contained and help preserve it for other users in future.
    – Monomeeth
    Commented Sep 25, 2019 at 4:27

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