The Special... key is a powerful search and identification tool within Excel. To set the scene, when building a financial model, one must know which cells contain formulas and which cells contain hard coded data (numbers punched in manually). The creator of the model will not want new users to overtype the cells that contain formulas with hard coded numbers, otherwise formulas will be lost. To avoid this, the financial modeller will use a colour coding system, whereby all "entry" cells are filled in yellow and have blue coloured text, and all cells that contain formulas, and therefore are not to be overtyped, are left with a black font and clear cell colouring.
The screenshot shows an example of a completed DCF model. However, there lies one problem for the creator of this model, in that he or she cannot quickly remember which cells contain formulas and which are hard coded.
To swiftly overcome this, the financial modeller hits the F5 Key, then clicks the Special... button (or uses the Alt+S keyboard shortcut). They configure the dialogue box as below, which tells Excel to highlight all cells that contain constant values that are numerical. 
Once the user clicks the OK button, Excel goes ahead and highlights the relevant cells. The financial modeller can then easily change the formatting of these cells so that future users know which cells to leave untouched and which cells are safe to enter data into. 
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