RibbonKeys
Windows Excel's Alt shortcuts, on the Mac.
RibbonKeys is a menu-bar app that brings the Alt-key ribbon shortcuts of Excel for Windows to Excel for Mac. It is for people who learned Excel on Windows and miss its key tips: tap ⌥, the letters appear over the ribbon, and H B A draws all borders without the mouse. It is free for 7 days, then €3.99 a month or €39.99 once.
Download RibbonKeysFree for 7 days, with no account and no card. After that €3.99 a month or €39.99 once.
Needs macOS 13 or later and Excel for Mac set to English (United Kingdom).
How it works
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Tap ⌥
Tap the Option key by itself while Excel is in front, or hold it down with the first letter. Every tab gets a letter.
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Type the tab's letter
H opens Home, and every control on it gets its letters: the same ones as on Windows. A letter you have typed turns faint, and the letters it rules out are dimmed.
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Type on
The last letter presses the button. If the button opens a dropdown, its items get letters too, and so does every submenu below it. Esc steps back one level.
A few sequences
- ⌥ H 1 Bold
- ⌥ H B A All borders
- ⌥ E S Paste Special
- ⌥ H O I Auto-fit column width
- ⌥ H L H G Highlight cells greater than
- ⌥ A T Filter
- ⌥ W F F Freeze panes
RibbonKeys covers the seven standard tabs with their dropdowns and submenus, the tabs Excel adds for a table, a chart, a pivot table, a shape or a picture, the menu keys of Excel 2003, the Quick Access Toolbar and the controls of dialogs. Galleries and colour swatches are left to the arrow keys, as on Windows.
With and without RibbonKeys
- Excel for Mac's own shortcuts. Excel for Mac has shortcuts with ⌘. They differ from the Windows ones and reach only part of the ribbon; the rest is the mouse.
- Excel for Mac's own KeyTips. Since 2024 Excel for Mac can show letters over its ribbon itself. They are switched off by default; you switch them on in Excel's settings, under Accessibility. As Microsoft introduced them, some sequences differ from Windows, the items of a dropdown are chosen with the arrow keys, Esc ends the whole sequence, and holding ⌥ with a letter types a symbol. If they do what you need, you do not need RibbonKeys.
- With RibbonKeys. The Windows letters throughout, also on the items of dropdowns and their submenus. Esc steps back one level, ⌥ can be held with the first letter, and the menu keys of Excel 2003 work, such as E S for Paste Special. Its limits: British English Excel only for now, it costs money after the trial, and it needs the Accessibility permission.
Price
Try it free for 7 days. The trial starts when you first open RibbonKeys and asks for nothing. After that, choose one:
Monthly
€3.99a month, until you cancel
Lifetime
€39.99once
You buy from inside the app, under Licence… in its menu-bar menu. Payment happens on a checkout page in your browser. The terms of sale say how cancelling and the right of withdrawal work.
Questions and answers
What is RibbonKeys?
RibbonKeys is a menu-bar app for the Mac that brings the Alt-key ribbon shortcuts of Excel for Windows, also called KeyTips, to Excel for Mac. Tap the Option key, letters appear over the ribbon, and typing the Windows sequence presses the button: Option H O I fits the column width, as Alt H O I does on Windows.
Which versions of Excel and which languages does it work with?
RibbonKeys works with Excel for Mac when Excel's language is English (United Kingdom), on macOS 13 or later. It is made and tested with the current version of Excel for Mac, version 16. Other languages, US English among them, are not supported yet, because RibbonKeys finds each button by the name Excel shows for it.
How is it different from the shortcuts Excel for Mac already has?
Excel for Mac has its own shortcuts with the Command key, which differ from the Windows ones and reach only part of the ribbon. Since 2024 it also has KeyTips of its own, switched off by default, in Excel's settings under Accessibility. RibbonKeys uses the Windows letters throughout, puts letters on the items of dropdowns and submenus as well, steps back one level with Esc, lets you hold Option down with the first letter, and accepts the menu keys of Excel 2003, such as E S for Paste Special. If Excel's own KeyTips do what you need, you do not need RibbonKeys.
What does it cost, and is there a trial?
RibbonKeys is free for 7 days, with no account and no card. After that it costs €3.99 a month or €39.99 once for a lifetime licence. When the trial ends, the letters are switched off until you buy.
Why does it need the Accessibility permission?
macOS only lets an app notice a key press in another app, read where that app's buttons are and press them with the Accessibility permission. RibbonKeys uses it to notice the tap on Option, to find the ribbon's buttons so that it can draw the letters over them, and to press the button whose letters you typed. It acts only in Excel and only during a letter sequence.
Does RibbonKeys read my workbooks or send data anywhere?
No. RibbonKeys does not read the cells of your sheets, does not record key presses and sends nothing about your workbooks anywhere. About once an hour it checks its licence with RevenueCat and fetches the newest version number from ribbonkeys.com. There are no accounts, no analytics and no tracking.
Privacy
Last updated 4 October 2026
RibbonKeys needs the Accessibility permission of macOS. This is everything it does with it, and everything it sends.
- Your workbooks stay on your Mac. RibbonKeys does not read the cells of your sheets, and nothing about your workbooks is sent anywhere.
- Keys. While it runs, macOS passes key presses and mouse clicks to RibbonKeys; that is how it notices the tap on ⌥. It acts on them only in Excel and only during a letter sequence. It does not record them and does not send them.
- The ribbon, the menus and dialogs. It reads the names and positions of Excel's tabs, buttons, menu items and dialog controls, to know where to draw the letters and what to press. Along the way it sees the titles of Excel's windows, which include the workbook's name, and the text in the boxes of an open dialog. It keeps none of this and sends none of it.
- Licence check. About once an hour it asks RevenueCat, the service that handles the purchase, whether its licence code has been paid for. The code is made from your Mac's hardware identifier in a way that cannot be turned back; the identifier itself is not sent.
- Update check. About once an hour it fetches one small file from this site, which holds the number of the newest version.
- Payment. You pay in your browser on a checkout page run by RevenueCat with Stripe. Your e-mail address and payment details go to them, not to the app. They keep the record of your purchase: your e-mail address, what you bought and when, and the licence code. The seller can see that record, and uses it to answer you and for the bookkeeping the law requires.
- This site. It sets no cookies and loads nothing from other sites. It is served through Cloudflare, which sees your IP address when you load a page, as any web server does.
- Nothing else. No accounts, no analytics and no tracking, in the app or on this site. Nothing is sold or shared.
To see what is held about you, or to have it corrected or deleted, write to [email protected]. If this policy changes, the date above changes with it.
Support
A question, a sequence that does not work, or a lost licence code: write to [email protected]. It helps to say which versions of macOS and Excel you have.