In Excel for Mac, when you select a range of values and then press Backspace, they are all cleared. The same behaviour occurs in Excel for Web.

However, in Excel for Windows, it’s a different story. Pressing Backspace only clears the first value in the range.

If you want to move to the next cell, press Enter or Return. Then, you can rinse and repeat the process for that and the rest if you really want to.

What is consistent across the three platforms is that if you select a range and then press the Delete key, the values all disappear.

Only full-sized keyboards are guaranteed to have a Delete key, though. If you’re using a laptop, you might or you might not, depending on the model.

Even if you don’t, you are still likely to have a modifier key called Function or abbreviated to fn. Holding that down and pressing Backspace will usually replicate what Delete does.

But the point is, why is this different in the Windows version?

Surely, when you select a range and press Backspace, you don’t expect to clear only one cell.

I still haven’t got used to it, even after all these years.