Excel Zoom

I’ve gotten a few requests for a way to help transition to Excel 2007 from earlier versions of Excel.  As anyone who first tries using Excel 2007 will notice, the traditional File, Edit, View, etc. menus are no longer available.  Instead there is a ribbon, which acts like the old menus.

To help Excel 2007 newbies make the transition, I’ve designed a quick reference mapping of the Excel 2003 menus to the Excel 2007 ribbon on a convenient mouse pad.  For example, if you previously went to Format | Cells to access the format cells menu, you would go to Home Tab | Cells Group | Format in Excel 2007.

If you think it would help, check it out at CafePress.com by clicking on the image below.

Excel 2007 Mousepad

For all of you out there still wondering where the “File” menu is in Excel 2007 and other Office 2007 products, another twist is in store for you.  Microsoft announced earlier this week that they are planning on releasing Office 2010, which includes updates to Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, OneNote, Publisher, Access, SharePoint Workspace (formerly Groove 2007), and InfoPath.

In addition to the new programs, Microsoft is also introducing Office Web Applications, which compliments Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote to allow you to access your files from anywhere with an internet connection.  It also allows you to share documents with others and even gives you the ability to work simultaneously on the same document.  Further adding to their product offerings is Office Mobile, which allows you to view Word, Excel, and PowerPoint files on a mobile version of the software.  Email will also be easier to manage with Outlook Mobile.

OK, so enough with the Office features, what’s new in Excel 2010?

Spreadsheets can now be run in your web browser, and be published to the web via the desktop version.  The browser version does not have as many features as the desktop version, however it is an improvement over Google Spreadsheets.  Additionally, a new analytic feature is called Sparklines, which produce a visual trend of a data set over time similar to a chart, except the Sparkline is contained within a single cell.  For example, if you’re tracking monthly sales of a product, you can set a Sparkline that will show the peaks and valleys that the data produces.

One thing users of Excel 2007 (and other Office 2007 programs) who are just getting used to the new Ribbon will not have to worry about is learning another new user interface.  The ribbon should remain essentially the same as in the 2007 version, except for a few new features.

This post will get updated as I discover new features, so please bookmark it and check back often.

Sometimes, it’s useful to be able to remove personal information from your workbook, in the event that you’re sending the file to someone else, whether it’s someone from another company, posting it to a forum, or sending it via email.

Excel will, by default, save information such as the author, file title, comments, etc. This information, could be potentially damaging if it was put in the wrong hands.

Luckily, Excel 2007 makes it easy to remove this information. Click the Office Button | Prepare | Inspect Document. Check all the options on the menu that appears, and click Inspect. Excel will then check each category to see if there is any document information that can be removed and will show a Remove All button next to each that has any information. Click the button, and the information is removed.

If you have a list with cells of all different colors, you can apply a filter to those cells to have Excel filter them by color, and then apply a formula to count how many of those cells are visible.

First, select your list. Right click and choose Filter | Filter by Selected Cells Color. You can then select the filter drop down in your list’s first cell and choose which color to filter. Next, in a row that is outside your list, type in the following formula: =SUBTOTAL(103,A1:A100), where A1:A100 are the cells in your list. Whenever you filter the list, this formula will tell you how many cells are not hidden.

You can remove the filter at anytime, by choosing the Data tab, and clicking the Filter button, and the formula will give you the count of your whole list (i.e. 100 in the example of A1:A100).

For a person who has used previous versions of Excel, Excel 2007 can be a little intimidating at first. For starters, there are none of the familiar menu options, and some of the keyboard shortcuts that have become second nature have changed. Don’t let this discourage you though. With a little guidance and familiarization, you’ll find that Excel 2007 is more powerful and easier to use than before.

1. Office Button: This button contains most of the functions found in the File Menu from previous versions of Excel. Commands, such as New, Open, Save, Print and others can be found here.
2. Quick Access Toolbar: The Quick Access Toolbar is fully customizable, and allows you to display commonly used commands. In the image above, there is Save, Undo, Redo, Print Preview and New Workbook.
3. Ribbon: The Ribbon replaces the traditional menus found in previous versions of Excel. The standard ribbon tabs are Home, Insert, Page Layout, Formulas, Data, Review, and View. Excel will automatically add menus as necessary to allow you to work with the content of your worksheet. You’ll notice that there is also a Developer and an Add-Ins tab in the image above. This is because there are macros stored in the workbook, which are shown in the Developer tab, as well as several Add-Ins that are running.
4. Help: The Help button provides one click access to be able to browse Excel’s help topics.
5. Name Box: The Name Box isn’t different from previous versions of Excel, however it is one of the lesser known features found in Excel. This displays the cell reference when selecting a cell (the column and row cross section). You can also type a named range in here. To learn more about naming ranges, take a look at our article Tips – Naming Ranges.
6. Insert Function: By clicking the Insert Function button, Excel will open the Insert Function dialogue box. Here you can search for functions by typing keywords in the search box, or by selecting a category from the drop down menu. The Insert Functions interface is the same as in previous versions of Excel.
7. Formula Bar and Expand Formula Bar Button: The Formula Bar should look familiar to you if you have used Excel before. What’s different in Excel 2007 is the Expand Formula Bar Button on the right. When working with long formulas, this button increases the height of the formula bar, without covering over the data in the first few rows of your spreadsheet. It also enables you to scroll vertically through the formula with the scrolling buttons it displays after clicking the Expand Formula Bar Button.
8. Right Click MiniBar: When right clicking a cell in Excel 2007, you’ll see a new MiniBar in addition to the usual shortcut menu, which displays commonly used editing features. This is makes editing easier, so you don’t have to keep clicking back to the Home tab on the Ribbon in order to format your worksheet.
9. Right Click Shortcut Menu: The shortcut menu in Excel 2007 hasn’t changed much, but also displays with the MiniBar when right clicking.
10. Vertical/Horizontal Split Box: The split boxes in Excel 2007 are not a new feature, but are not very well known. By clicking and dragging either the vertical or horizontal bars, you can split your worksheet into several scrollable panes, allowing you to view different areas of your worksheet at once. To learn more about the split box, take a look at our article Tips – Split a Worksheet Into Multiple Panes.
11. Status Bar: The status bar shows information about Excel. In the image above it says “Ready”, however if you’re saving a file, it will display the status there. The AutoSave feature will also display a status in this location when it is saving your work. The status bar also displays the selected cell statistics, quick views bar and zoom level. The status bar is also customizable. Simply right click somewhere in the status bar to display the customization menu.
12. Worksheet Tabs and Insert New Worksheet Button: The worksheet tabs should be a familiar sight from previous versions of Excel, but the Insert New Worksheet button is a new addition. You can now insert new worksheets with one click of the Insert New Worksheet button.
13. Selected Cell Statistics: In previous versions of Excel, when highlighting several cells with numbers Excel would, by default, show the sum of those numbers here. In Excel 2007, it also displays the average and count of those cells in addition to the sum. For purposes of the illustration above, we’ve edited the image to display the selected cell statistics as if we were to highlight two cells, one with a 5 and the other with a 1. We did this so we could also illustrate the right click menu, that would have otherwise obscured the data in the selected cells.
14. Quick Views: The Quick Views bar allows you to quickly switch between Normal, Page Layout and Page Break Preview views. While these page views aren’t new to Excel 2007, the easy access quick views bar is.
15. Zoom Level: The Zoom Level bar replaces the zoom level drop down menu from previous versions of Excel. You can change the zoom by dragging the arrow left or right to a minimum zoom of 10% or a maximum zoom of 400%. Alternatively, you can click the + or – buttons to increase/decrease the zoom level by 10% with each click.