Excel shortcuts for financial modeling

Speed in modelling is not vanity, it is how often you audit. An analyst who can trace a number's lineage in two keystrokes will trace it fifty times a day; one who must fish through menus with a mouse will trace it twice and trust the rest. Macabacus, ThinkCell, and the modelling desks that value speed drill keyboard fluency for this reason. The essential auditing kit, all keyboard:

• Ctrl+[: jump to (select) the cells a formula directly depends on (its precedents). Land on a covenant ratio, press Ctrl+[, and you are standing on the cells that built it. F5 then Enter jumps you back.
• Ctrl+] (jump to the cells that depend on this one (its dependents)) "who uses this input?"
• Trace Precedents / Dependents arrows: Formulas ▸ Formula Auditing ▸ Trace Precedents (Alt, M, P) / Trace Dependents (Alt, M, D) draw blue arrows showing the dependency web; Remove Arrows is Alt, M, A, A. Arrows are the visual complement to Ctrl+[/Ctrl+].
• F2 (Edit), the range finder: it puts the cursor in the formula and outlines every precedent range in a matching colour, so you see what the formula reaches.
• F9 on a selection: in the formula bar, select any sub-expression and press F9 to evaluate just that piece to its value (press Esc, never Enter, to avoid hardcoding it). This is how you find which part of a long formula is wrong.
• Evaluate Formula: Formulas ▸ Evaluate Formula (Alt, M, V) steps through a nested formula one calculation at a time, showing each intermediate result. The tool of choice for a formula too tangled to read.
• Watch Window: Formulas ▸ Watch Window (Alt, M, W) pins chosen cells (the checks row, a key output) in a floating panel so you can watch them update while editing another sheet, invaluable for confirming the balance check stays zero as you work.
• Alt+= inserts a SUM of the obvious range; Ctrl+ (grave)** toggles Show Formulas; **Ctrl+F3` opens the Name Manager.

Build these into your hands until tracing is a reflex. The node's shortcut drill trains exactly F5/Ctrl+[ tracing and F9 evaluation, because the analyst who audits by reflex is the analyst whose models are trusted.