Legacy Alt+E shortcuts now supported - Excel 2003 muscle memory restored

21 December 2025

v2.1.7 adds support for legacy pre-ribbon Excel shortcuts from the Edit menu (Alt+E)

If you learned Excel before 2007, you probably still have Alt+E+S+V (Paste Values) burned into your muscle memory. Good news: those legacy shortcuts now work with Accelerator Keys!

Legacy Edit Menu Shortcuts

We’ve added support for the classic pre-ribbon Edit menu shortcuts that power users have relied on for decades:

• Paste Special (Alt+E+S+…): Paste Values, Formulas, Transpose, Formatting, Column Widths, No Borders, and more — 12 paste options in total.
• Clear (Alt+E+A+…): Clear All, Clear Formats, Clear Contents, and Clear Comments.
• Delete (Alt+E+D): Opens the Delete menu for cells, rows, columns, or sheets.

These legacy shortcuts are automatically mapped to their modern ribbon equivalents, so you get the same result whether you use Alt+E+S+V or Alt+H+V+V.

How It Works

When you press Alt+E, Accelerator Keys recognizes the legacy Edit menu prefix and shows you the available options (S for Paste Special, A for Clear, D for Delete). Continue typing the full sequence just like you did in Excel 2003.

Full List of Legacy Shortcuts

Legacy Shortcut	Action	Modern Equivalent
Alt+E+S+V	Paste Values	Alt+H+V+V
Alt+E+S+F	Paste Formulas	Alt+H+V+F
Alt+E+S+T	Paste Transpose	Alt+H+V+T
Alt+E+A+A	Clear All	Alt+H+E+A
Alt+E+A+F	Clear Formats	Alt+H+E+F
Alt+E+D	Delete	Alt+H+D

See the full list of legacy shortcuts in our guides.

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