Just as we did in our guide on inserting rows, we would be touching on two ways of inserting a column anywhere in excel. The first method would be primarily with your mouse or touchpad and the second method would be through your keyboard shortcuts.
Inserting Columns with Mouse / Touchpad
To insert rows in excel using your mouse or touchpad, just follow these easy steps
Step 1: Select a column by navigating to the top of the column letter and clicking it. The column selected should be the one you want to appear to the right of the new column. In our example, we would select column A, and if we go through this process correctly, the current content on column A should shift to column B.
Step 2: Right click and click on insert
Step 3: You’re done, the current content should shift to the right
Inserting Columns with Shortcuts
Now, for those who want to move through excel faster and are adept at memorizing things, you might want to add the shortcuts we would discuss to things to commit to memory. However, the reality is that you may not need to dedicate time and energy to memorize the shortcuts if you use it frequently. Most times, it just naturally sticks to memory with frequent use. Let’s go over the steps below
Step 1: Highlight the column you intend to push to the right by pressing CTRL + Space on any cell within the chosen column.
Step 2: After highlighting the column, use the following combination: CTRL SHIFT +
You should see a result similar to the result in the image below.
Insert Cells (Shift Cells to the right)
Excel gives you the opportunity to push single cells to the right instead of the whole column. The process is pretty much the same as that of inserting columns with shortcuts, the only difference is that rather than selecting the column, we just use the combination directly on the cell we want to push to the right. Let’s see an example below.
Step 1: Select the cell you want to push to the right
Step 2: Press the combination CTRL SHIFT +, this would pop out an insert cells dialog box because the entire column was not selected.
Step 3: Select Shift cells right and click on ok
The result:
Note: Excel still gives you the option of inserting columns from the insert cells dialog box. All you need to do is select that option and press ok.
