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How to select multiple cells in Excel, and how to drop one back out

By Alberto Gulotta · Updated 25 September 2026 · 12 min read

To select multiple cells in Excel, click the first one and drag across the rest. For cells that do not touch, Microsoft’s instruction is one line: “To select non-adjacent cells and cell ranges, hold Ctrl and select the cells.” The keyboard can do all of it, and one move is impossible on one Microsoft page and easy on another.

1. Click the first cell, or drag across the first block. That is Microsoft’s route for a plain range: one cell, left button down, drag over the rest.
2. For cells that do not touch, hold Ctrl and click each one. “To select non-adjacent cells and cell ranges, hold Ctrl and select the cells.” Whole rows and columns work the same way: “To select non-adjacent rows or columns, hold Ctrl and select the row or column numbers.”
3. For a long stretch, click the first cell and Shift-click the last. Microsoft adds the part that makes it useful: you can scroll to bring the last cell into view before you Shift-click it. That beats dragging through a thousand rows.
4. To do it without holding Ctrl, press Shift and F8. That turns on the mode that adds another block to the selection, and the same keys turn it off. Exceljet gives the Mac form, fn + Shift + F8, which Microsoft’s page does not.
5. For a whole column or row, use the heading or the space bar. Microsoft gives both: the column letter or Ctrl + Space from any cell in it, the row number or Shift + Space from any cell in the row.
6. If nothing selects at all, look at whether the sheet is protected. Microsoft puts this before the instructions, not after: “If a worksheet has been protected, you might not be able to select cells or their contents on a worksheet.”

The Name box selects what you cannot reach. It is the box to the left of the formula bar, and Microsoft describes it as the quick way to locate and select cells or ranges by name or by reference. Type an address and press Enter — B1:B3 for three cells, A1:A2000 for two thousand. For a long column that is a few keystrokes against a very long drag.

Where this answer stops. Neither Microsoft page is written for every Excel. Select cell contents in Excel names eight products including the Mac versions; Select specific cells or ranges in Excel names five, all of them Windows, and keeps the browser in a tab of its own. If you are working in a browser, the second page is the one that answers you — and its answer for cells that do not touch is that you cannot.

Not covered here. It does not cover selecting cells across two sheets at once.

It does not cover what a selection does to the cells once you act on it: copying, formatting and deleting a multiple selection each have their own rules.

And it does not cover selecting inside a PivotTable, where the shapes you can pick are the report’s, not the sheet’s. What holds instead is simple: where two pages of the same documentation say opposite things, this page prints both sentences with the name of the page that carries each, and tells you how to settle it on your own copy.