Control+Backspace is a common shortcut for deleting the previous 'word' (the previous block of text to some form of white space).
It's very common in IDE's, even FireFox supports it if you type words in the address bar, press Control Backspace and the behavior happens there.
Asking ChatGPT about the origins of this, it points to Control+W originating from Unix Terminals, and how it's been adopted by most IDE's as Control+Backspace.
Microsoft has very poor support for it in their tools, and I use MS products for the bulk of my work.
Moving to non-Microsoft products like Google Sheets, and viola, Control+Backspace works.
Even muscle memory stuff like Control+Shift and left arrow to select previous words; also not supported by Excel, but it is by Google Sheets and IDE's.
> How is what you want different from pressing delete?
Compact and laptop keyboards; sometimes excluded, often poorly/inconsistently sized/positioned.
There's a much better chance of Ctrl+Backspace being a consistent movement independent of keyboard layout, so I can appreciate where the parent is coming from.
Those compact layouts that exclude a delete key typically replace it with Fn + Backspace.
I'm not saying there aren't scenarios where ctrl + backspace would be useful, however the majority of the time I'd argue that delete is available and should be used.
Is the desire for a ctrl + backspace chord coming from some other system where this is the standard keying?
I just want paste to work as a human might expect. Normal paste in excel ... brings color and font information in, ctrl+shift+v which should just be plain ... does something else? Idk wtf it does, but it paste strings from further back in the history. At least for me on mac
ALT+E, S, V is paste as values.
ALT+E, S, T is paste formats.
ALT+E, S, F is paste formulas.
Those are the ones I use most frequently and these keystrokes are now deeply embedded in my muscle memory.
BTW, I would take slight issue with your expectations of what a human might expect... I actually think the standard CTRL+V paste does what 90% of Excel users expect.
[Edited to add: this is on Windows, didn't read your comment properly about your experience on a Mac. My apologies.]
This works until you try have to use Excel localized in languages other than English, since Microsoft thought having localized shortcuts was a good idea.
at least you can rebind these types of keybinds in an external keyboard remapping tool, but in general it's a disgrace that you still can't have convenient remapping
