How to Use Alt Key Shortcuts in Google Sheets (For Excel Users)

You tap Alt, type H, and nothing happens — or Chrome’s menu opens. That’s not you. Sheets has no ribbon and no Alt-menu system, so Excel sequences like Alt H H or Alt E S V have nothing to land on. Here’s the short version of what’s going on and what actually works.

Why Alt Does Nothing in Google Sheets

In Excel, Alt isn’t a held combo — you tap it, release, and type letters to walk the ribbon: Alt H O I autofits columns, Alt H B A is all borders, Alt E S V pastes values. Nobody memorizes these as a list; your hands learn them, which is exactly why Sheets feels broken when you switch. Sheets runs in a browser tab and the browser owns the Alt key — on Windows a tapped Alt just focuses Chrome’s own menu, so the keystroke never reaches the spreadsheet. Mac is the same story with Option, which macOS uses to type special characters instead.

What Sheets Gives You Natively

The “Enable compatible spreadsheet shortcuts” toggle (Help → Keyboard shortcuts) is worth turning on — it adds F4 and a few Excel-style basics (full rundown here) — but it does not add any Alt sequences. Beyond that, a handful of Excel commands live under different keys:

• Paste values: Ctrl + Shift + V (Excel’s Alt E S V).
• Clear formatting: Ctrl + \ (Excel’s Alt H E F).
• Align center / left / right: Ctrl + Shift + E / L / R.
• Search the menus: Alt + / — the fastest native route to anything without a shortcut.

Everything else — fill color, borders, autofit, freeze panes, the paste special variants — is menu or toolbar only. That’s the real problem: the native set covers a fraction of what an Alt-key user does all day. The full Excel-to-Sheets conversion table maps it all side by side.

Getting the Real Alt Sequences Back

The only fix that works is intercepting the keys inside the tab, before the browser acts on them — which means a Chrome extension. I built XLKeys for exactly this, after failing to fix it with key remappers. Install it, refresh your sheet, and the sequences work the way your hands expect: tap Alt (Option on Mac), release, type the letters. Alt H H opens a fill color picker, Alt H B A applies all borders, Alt H O I autofits columns, Alt W F F freezes panes.

The core formatting sequences are free. The Alt E S paste special suite — values, formats, transpose, column widths — is part of XLKeys Pro, which has a 30-day free trial. Here’s what I’d get back first:

If your hands still type Alt H H out of habit, install XLKeys free and let them — same keys as Excel, Windows or Mac.