23 things to know about Excel Tables by Dave Bruns | May 17, 2018 Excel Tables have a boring (and confusingly generic) name, but they are packed with useful features. This article is a summary of the things you should know about Excel Tables. 1. Creating a table is fast You can create an Excel Table in less than 10 seconds. First, remove blank rows and make sure all columns have a unique name, then put the cursor anywhere in the data and use the keyboard shortcut Control + T. When you click OK, Excel will create the table. 2. Navigate directly to tables Like named ranges, tables will appear in the namebox dropdown menu. Just click the menu, and select the table. Excel will navigate to the table, even if it's on a different tab in a workbook. 3. Tables provide special shortcuts When you convert regular data to an Excel Table, almost every shortcut you know works better. For example, you can select rows with shift + space, and columns with control ...