I wrote a tiny AutoHotkey script where F1 types today’s date (YYYY-MM-DD), F2 inserts “N/A”, and Ctrl+Alt+; jumps three fields, which saved me about 25 minutes on a 1,200-row spreadsheet yesterday. If you want the snippet or have smarter mappings for Excel/Sheets, share them here — small wins stack up and you’ve got this.
I map Alt+= to paste values-only in Excel by sending the ribbon sequence Alt, H, V, V; it kills formatting junk when pasting from web tables and sped up reconciles. In Sheets that sequence can drop keys, so I set a tiny delay with SetKeyDelay 30 (https://www.autohotkey.com/docs/v2/lib/SetKeyDelay.htm) or have the same hotkey send Ctrl+Shift+V in browsers.
But building on @hweaver39’s values-only angle, I bound F3 to a ‘paste clean’ that strips non-digits and extra spaces from the clipboard, then pastes into Excel/Sheets. It stops phone/account fields from failing validation and shaved about 15 minutes on a 900-row import — same small-win vibe as your F1 date and ‘N/A’ hotkeys. Caveat: I keep Shift+F3 for raw paste so I don’t lose leading zeros or a + in international numbers.
I set Win+F9 to stamp “YYYY-MM-DD HH:mm — JC” into the active cell for quick audit trails; it saves me from typing initials all day. In Excel it’s just text so it won’t recalc, and in Sheets it behaves the same; only caveat is F-keys can be hijacked, so I used Win+ instead, @hweaver39. It’s like leaving breadcrumbs I can search later.
Swapped your “jump three fields” idea for a “next blank” hop: Ctrl+Alt+Enter sends Ctrl+Down, Down, F2 so I land ready to type, and it shaved about 20 minutes on a 1,200-row cleanup. Tiny caveat: filters or merged cells can throw it off; when filtered I use Go To Special > Blanks instead.