F4 in Excel: Repeats Your Last Action and Locks a Reference

F4 in Excel does two completely different things depending on when you press it — and both save time you'd otherwise spend repeating the same action or rewriting formulas. Outside of cell editing, it repeats the last command you ran. Inside a formula, on a cell address, it toggles between reference types — and that second ability tends to be the key one for more advanced Excel work.

A typical scenario

Honza needs to color twenty non-adjacent cells the same yellow as a flag for missing data. Without F4, he'd have to reopen the color palette every time, find the same shade, and click — the same routine, twenty times over.

With F4, he colors the first cell normally, then just clicks the next cell and presses F4 — the color repeats without change. Twenty cells take a few seconds, and the color palette never has to open a second time.

How to do it

1. Repeating the last action: make any change (coloring a cell, inserting a row, changing a format, clearing content), move to a different cell or selection, and press F4 — the same action repeats exactly as you last did it.
2. It works for most one-off actions: formatting, inserting and deleting rows or columns, changing column width, and the like — it doesn't work on actions that need a dialog with new input every time.
3. Toggling reference type in a formula: while typing or editing a formula, click a cell address (say A1) and press F4 repeatedly — Excel cycles through A1 → $A$1 → A$1 → $A1 and back to A1.
4. $A$1 (an absolute reference) doesn't change at all when the formula is copied; A$1 and $A1 (mixed references) lock only the row, or only the column; A1 (relative) shifts along with the copied formula in both directions.
5. Locking a reference is typically useful for a formula you're copying down an entire column that needs to point to one fixed cell (say, a VAT rate in the header) — without the dollar signs, it would drift away from that cell as you copy.

The best tools

• The built-in F4 key (Excel) — two features on one key, works in every current version with nothing to configure.
• Google Sheets — F4 also toggles between relative and absolute references in a formula; the habit carries over unchanged.
• On a Mac with default function-key settings, you may need to press Fn + F4 if the keyboard's F-keys are set to other functions by default (brightness, volume, etc.).

What you get out of it

• Time: roughly 5 minutes a day on repeated formatting and formula edits that would otherwise mean reopening dialogs or retyping dollar signs by hand.
• Fewer formula errors: a correctly locked reference means a formula won't snap onto the wrong cell when copied.
• Smoother work: repeating an action with one keypress instead of repeating the whole mouse-driven process.

Pro tip

Repeating an action with F4 also works right after inserting a new row or column — insert one, move to where you need the next, and F4 repeats it without having to go back through the menu.