Quick answer
Microsoft still publishes the official Excel 2013 Quick Start Guide as a free PDF on its support site1, alongside the guides for the other Office 2013 apps2. It is a short visual tour of the 2013 window rather than a course. Note that Office 2013 reached end of support on April 11, 20233, so it receives no further security updates — the cheat sheet below still applies, because almost every shortcut and feature in it survives unchanged in current Excel.
Where to get the official Excel 2013 quick start guide
It lives on Microsoft’s support site as a downloadable PDF: Excel 2013 Quick Start Guide. In Microsoft’s words, “if you’re new to Excel 2013, this free guide offers useful tips to help you find your way around.”
There is a companion page collecting the quick start guides for every Office 2013 application — Word, PowerPoint, Outlook, OneNote and the rest — if you are setting up a machine with the whole suite.
Set expectations before you download: these guides are two to four pages of annotated screenshots showing where things are. They are genuinely useful on day one and not a substitute for a course. If you want structured learning, the Excel courses comparison covers what the main platforms actually teach.
The shortcut cheat sheet
These were the shortcuts worth knowing in 2013 and they are still the shortcuts worth knowing now. Every one below works in current versions of Excel for Windows.
| Shortcut | What it does | Why it earns a place |
|---|---|---|
| Alt+= | AutoSum the range above or to the left | Writes the SUM formula and guesses the range for you |
| Ctrl+E | Flash Fill | New in 2013. Type one example, Excel infers the pattern for the column |
| Ctrl+Q | Quick Analysis | New in 2013. Formatting, charts, totals and sparklines for the selection |
| Ctrl+T | Turn a range into a Table | Charts and formulas then grow with the data instead of missing new rows |
| Ctrl+1 | Format Cells dialog | The fastest route to number formats, borders and alignment |
| Ctrl+Shift+L | Toggle filters on and off | Faster than the ribbon, and it clears filters as well as adding them |
| F4 | Repeat the last action; in the formula bar, cycle $ signs | Two completely different jobs, both worth the muscle memory |
| Alt+; | Select visible cells only | Stops hidden and filtered rows coming along when you copy |
| Ctrl+arrow | Jump to the edge of the data block | Add Shift to select everything on the way |
| Ctrl+; | Insert today’s date as a static value | Unlike TODAY(), it does not change tomorrow |
| Ctrl+` | Show formulas instead of results | The quickest way to audit a sheet someone else built |
| Ctrl+Enter | Fill the whole selection with what you typed | Select the range first, type once, done |
| Ctrl+PgDn / PgUp | Move between worksheets | Essential in workbooks with a dozen tabs |
Two of these deserve a longer look. Alt+; is the fix for the most common copy-paste disaster in Excel — filtering a list, copying it, and getting the hidden rows back on paste; the detail is in copying only visible cells. And Alt+= is worth understanding rather than trusting blindly, because AutoSum guesses the range and its guess is occasionally wrong.
What Excel 2013 introduced that you still use
Excel 2013 was a substantial release, and most of what it added is still in Microsoft 365 essentially unchanged. If you are learning on 2013, this part of your knowledge transfers intact.
| Feature | What it does | Where to find it |
|---|---|---|
| Flash Fill | Splits or joins text by example, without a formula | Ctrl+E, or Data → Flash Fill |
| Quick Analysis | A pop-up menu of formatting, charts and totals for the current selection | Ctrl+Q, or the icon at the corner of a selection |
| Recommended Charts | Excel proposes chart types that suit the shape of your data | Insert → Recommended Charts |
| Recommended PivotTables | The same idea for PivotTables | Insert → Recommended PivotTables |
| Chart side buttons | The +, brush and filter icons beside a selected chart | Click any chart |
| Timeline slicer | A date filter you drag, for PivotTables | PivotTable Analyze → Insert Timeline |
| One window per workbook | Each file gets its own window, so two monitors finally work properly | Automatic |
Flash Fill in particular replaces a lot of formula work for one-off jobs. Type the first name from a full-name column into the cell beside it, press Ctrl+E, and Excel fills the rest. The catch is that the result is static values — if the source list keeps changing you want a formula instead, and getting the first and last word from a string covers those.
If you are still running Excel 2013
Office 2013 and its applications reached end of support on April 11, 20233. The software keeps working — nothing switches off — but Microsoft no longer issues security updates, bug fixes or technical support for it. For a machine that opens files from outside your organisation, that is the part that matters.
Two practical consequences show up in day-to-day work. Newer functions simply do not exist: XLOOKUP, FILTER, SORT, UNIQUE, LET, TEXTBEFORE and TEXTAFTER all return #NAME? in 2013. And files built in Microsoft 365 that use dynamic arrays will not behave as their author intended when opened in 2013.
If you need 2013 for a specific legacy workbook or add-in while working mainly in a current version, running two versions of Excel side by side sets out what Microsoft supports and the file-association problems to expect.
One more note if the reason you are on 2013 is a job requirement: employer Excel tests and the current Microsoft Office Specialist exams are built around current Excel, not 2013. Practising on an eleven-year-old build will leave gaps in exactly the areas the tests focus on.
Frequently asked questions
Where can I download the Excel 2013 quick start guide?
From Microsoft’s support site, on the Excel 2013 Quick Start Guide page linked in the sources below. It is a free PDF, and there is a companion page with the guides for the other Office 2013 applications.
Is Excel 2013 still supported?
No. Office 2013 products reached end of support on April 11, 2023. The programs still run, but there are no more security updates, bug fixes or support from Microsoft.
Can I still use Excel 2013?
Yes, it continues to work. The risks are security — no patches — and compatibility, since functions introduced after 2013 such as XLOOKUP, FILTER and TEXTBEFORE return #NAME? and workbooks that rely on them will not calculate as intended.
What is the Excel 2013 shortcut for Flash Fill?
Ctrl+E. Type the result you want in the cell beside the first row, press Ctrl+E, and Excel fills the rest of the column by inferring the pattern. It produces static values, not formulas.
Is the Excel 2013 cheat sheet still accurate?
The shortcuts are. Almost every keyboard shortcut and the features listed above carried forward unchanged into Microsoft 365. What has changed is additions rather than removals, so a 2013 cheat sheet is incomplete today rather than wrong.
Sources
- Excel 2013 Quick Start Guide — Microsoft Support. Accessed September 10, 2026.
- Office 2013 Quick Start Guides — Microsoft Support. Accessed September 10, 2026.
- Office 2013 products and Skype for Business 2015 end of support on April 11, 2023 — Microsoft Lifecycle. Accessed September 10, 2026.
- Keyboard shortcuts in Excel — Microsoft Support. Accessed September 10, 2026.
