'enter' key moves highlighted cell location

"SHIFT ENTER works. No other keyboard shortcut does and I think I tried them all. Thanks everyone. Frankly, I think this should be the default mode instead of requiring a key combination. It would distinguish the functionality of the ENTER key from the RETURN key."

As a long time AppleWorks user, I agree. Time to "Provide Numbers Feedback" (in the Numbers menu).

Regards,
Barry

Open up the Inspector. In the Table Inspector is a checkbox for how the Return key works. If you change it from the default, Return will put a carriage return in the cell when you hit it. If that's what you are looking to do, try Option-Return to do that (versus changing the default action of the key).

see p73 +Adding and Editing Table Cell Values+ of the Numbers09_UserGuide.pdf downloadable from under the Help Menu.

" *Adding and Editing Table Cell Values*
You can add, change, and delete the content in cells.

*Here are ways to add and edit values:*

• If the cell is empty, select it and then type a value. “ Selecting a Table Cell” on page 51 describes how to select cells.

• To replace specific content already in the cell, select the cell and then select what you want to replace by double-clicking; hold down the Shift key and select more content if you want to replace more. Type to replace the selected content.

•To replace everything in the cell, select the cell and then begin typing.

If “Return key moves to next cell” isn’t selected in the Table inspector, you can also
select the cell and then press Return or Enter, which selects everything in the cell, and
then start typing. "

I am guessing you would like to enter a number in a cell and have the rest of the spreadsheet update using that value, then do it again with another value, etc. but what you are seeing is that you need to hit enter/return for the change to take and it has the undesired side effect of moving you to another cell.

Try Shift ENTER. (not shift return)

Command-Return is the "shortcut" listed in Help/Keyboard Shortcuts to do what you are asking. After trying a more few combinations after my last post (control-return also seems to work), I decided to look and see if it had anything listed and it did.

James Merwin wrote:
SHIFT ENTER works. No other keyboard shortcut does and I think I tried them all.

Strange that the others don't work too. I've tried command-return, control-return, and shift-enter and they all seem to do the same thing for me. I've tried it on two different computers (one iMac, one Mac Pro).