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How to stay in the same cell after pressing the Enter key in Excel?

Author Xiaoyang Last modified

By default, pressing the Enter key in Excel moves the cursor to the next cell. However, there are situations where you may want to stay in the same cell after pressing Enter. This article introduces two quick and easy methods to achieve this in Excel.

Stay in the same cell after pressing the Enter key with Excel Options

Stay in the same cell after pressing the Enter key with Shortcut Keys

arrow blue right bubble Stay in the same cell after pressing the Enter key with Excel Options

In Excel, you can go to the Excel Options to set the option for changing the direction of the cursor after pressing the Enter key, please do as follows:

1. Click File > Options to go the Excel Options dialog.

2. In the Excel Options dialog box, click Advanced from the left pane, and in the right list box, under the Editing options section, uncheck After pressing Enter, move selection, see screenshot:

A screenshot of the Excel Options dialog box showing how to disable the cursor movement after pressing Enter

3. Click OK. From now on, when you enter content into a cell and press the Enter key, the input cell will remain selected and will not move.

arrow blue right bubble Stay in the same cell after pressing the Enter key with Shortcut Keys

In Excel, you can also use shortcut keys to solve this task.

After entering the content, press Ctrl + Enter keys together instead of just the Enter key to keep the current cell selected.

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