How to Enable Slashes (/) in Excel 365

Mitch Bartlett Comments (14)
Excel Header

By default, the slash (/) key acts as a shortcut to the Excel menu bar. Here’s how to disable this so that you may use the slash character within your Microsoft Excel 365 spreadsheet.

To enable Excel the ability to use the slash in your spreadsheet, follow these steps.

  1. Select “File” > “Options“.
    Excel 2010 Options selection
  2. Choose “Advanced“, and then scroll down until you see the “Lotus compatibility” section.
  3. In the “Microsoft Office Excel menu key:” field, replace the slash with a character that you do not use frequently such as a tilde (~) or grave accent (`), then select “OK“.
    Microsoft Excel menu key selection

 

This will make the slash character available to type in an Excel spreadsheet. The new character you set however will no longer be available to type. You can also leave the field blank if you don’t want a Lotus key.

Author Mitch Bartlett

My name is Mitch Bartlett. I've been working in technology for over 20 years in a wide range of tech jobs from Tech Support to Software Testing. I started this site as a technical guide for myself and it has grown into what I hope is a useful reference for all.

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Comments

  2. Thank you so much for this, I was pulling my hair out trying to figure out what I accidentally pressed on my keyboard.. How does this even happen? Why is this even a feature in excel for this to happen.

  3. Thank you very much! This is exactly the answer I needed!Thanks a lot! This is exactly the answer I needed! I spent a lot of time finding the solution!

  5. Found this solution after 45 minutes of searching online. Worked like a charm. Thanks.

  7. Thank you very much! This is exactly the answer I needed. I thought my laptop has a virus or malfunctioned. ?

  8. I found it much easier to type it into Word, then copy and paste into Excel.

    One of many clunky “features” in an enormously useful program.

  9. Awesome! Thanks so much. I thought I was losing it… Couldn’t start entering text in a cell with /. Just left the Lotus key (whatever that is) blank. Appears to do the same thing as alt.

  13. This one had me and all of my tech-savvy friends stumped. Thanks for putting the solution out here.

  14. thanks, It seems that in years of using excel i must have never tried to start a box with a / and yet, I managed to find this super useful page really easily to fix it. Much obliged

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