The only toolbar that is easy to customize in Excel 2007 is the QAT or Quick Access Toolbar. Episode 398 shows you how to customize the QAT with your favorite icons.
This blog is the video netcast companion to the upcoming book, Excel 2007 Miracles Made Easy. Download a new two minute video every Tuesday and Thursday to learn one of the tips from the book!
This blog is the video netcast companion to the upcoming book, Excel 2007 Miracles Made Easy. Download a new two minute video every Tuesday and Thursday to learn one of the tips from the book!
Transcript of the video:
Hey, welcome back to the MrExcel podcast, I’m Bill Jelen.
It’s Excel 2007 Thursday, every Tuesday and Thursday we're going to talk about something new in Excel 2007.
First, let's take a look at the toolbars back in Excel 2003.
In Excel 2003, all of the toolbars were completely customizable, you could add new buttons, take buttons off, you could rearrange them.
For example, I can take the Drawing toolbar, float it above my worksheet if I wanted to.
We had a Research task pane on the right-hand side, where we had all sorts of controls, you can see various things, Research task pane.
There were even the palettes that you could rip off the toolbar and float above your worksheet, 200 different items that you can have floating above your worksheet if you wanted to.
In Excel 2007, Microsoft has decided that everything has to be at the top.
They were no longer going to allow you to float any ribbon elements down into your worksheet, it's always going to be at the top.
Your only real choice for easy customization, is something called the Quick Access Toolbar, and it starts up right here with three buttons, Save, Undo, and Redo.
Now a couple of ways to customize that, the first thing you do is right-click and say that you want to show this below the ribbon.
When you move it below the ribbon, we now have more space to add some icons, and then, you can basically go through and add your favorite icons to the Quick Access Toolbar.
For example, let's say that we wanted to add the Right-Align icon, just simply right-click that, and say Add to Quick Access Toolbar, and it will add it.
You can fit about 40 or so icons going across the screen and then, if you add more, they end up in an expandable area off to the right-hand side.
Now, the most powerful way to update the Quick Access Toolbar is to go into the Office button, choose Excel Options, and then there's a setting there for Customize.
This is where you can add many, many, many icons to the toolbar, including some icons that are not anywhere else in Excel 2007.
If you choose the left drop-down box the something called Commands Not In the Ribbon, these are for all the commands that used to be in Excel 2003 that appear nowhere in the ribbon.
For example, the Camera tool, all the Speech tools, all sorts of important things here.
So if you have an obscured feature in Excel 2003 that you can't find in Excel 2007, you might want to go to Excel Options, click on Customize, Commands Not In Ribbon, and see if you can find the item here in this dialog box.
Once you find it, and you would just add it to the right-hand side, and I'll be permanently on the Quick Access Toolbar.
Another new feature in Excel 2007 is that Quick Access Toolbar can be customized for all workbooks, which is what we're doing here, or we can add certain icons just for the current workbook.
So we open this current workbook, we have our own special custom icons that appear, certainly not as good as the great customizable toolbars that we had an Excel 2003.
This is really one of the more disappointing aspects of Excel 2007, as a fact that we're stuck with only this one tiny little toolbar that can be customized.
Unless you want to get into programming, XML and RibbonX, and we'll talk about utilities that will do that later in a series.
Hey, thanks for stopping by, tomorrow we'll see you Friday for a Excel 2003 podcast!
It’s Excel 2007 Thursday, every Tuesday and Thursday we're going to talk about something new in Excel 2007.
First, let's take a look at the toolbars back in Excel 2003.
In Excel 2003, all of the toolbars were completely customizable, you could add new buttons, take buttons off, you could rearrange them.
For example, I can take the Drawing toolbar, float it above my worksheet if I wanted to.
We had a Research task pane on the right-hand side, where we had all sorts of controls, you can see various things, Research task pane.
There were even the palettes that you could rip off the toolbar and float above your worksheet, 200 different items that you can have floating above your worksheet if you wanted to.
In Excel 2007, Microsoft has decided that everything has to be at the top.
They were no longer going to allow you to float any ribbon elements down into your worksheet, it's always going to be at the top.
Your only real choice for easy customization, is something called the Quick Access Toolbar, and it starts up right here with three buttons, Save, Undo, and Redo.
Now a couple of ways to customize that, the first thing you do is right-click and say that you want to show this below the ribbon.
When you move it below the ribbon, we now have more space to add some icons, and then, you can basically go through and add your favorite icons to the Quick Access Toolbar.
For example, let's say that we wanted to add the Right-Align icon, just simply right-click that, and say Add to Quick Access Toolbar, and it will add it.
You can fit about 40 or so icons going across the screen and then, if you add more, they end up in an expandable area off to the right-hand side.
Now, the most powerful way to update the Quick Access Toolbar is to go into the Office button, choose Excel Options, and then there's a setting there for Customize.
This is where you can add many, many, many icons to the toolbar, including some icons that are not anywhere else in Excel 2007.
If you choose the left drop-down box the something called Commands Not In the Ribbon, these are for all the commands that used to be in Excel 2003 that appear nowhere in the ribbon.
For example, the Camera tool, all the Speech tools, all sorts of important things here.
So if you have an obscured feature in Excel 2003 that you can't find in Excel 2007, you might want to go to Excel Options, click on Customize, Commands Not In Ribbon, and see if you can find the item here in this dialog box.
Once you find it, and you would just add it to the right-hand side, and I'll be permanently on the Quick Access Toolbar.
Another new feature in Excel 2007 is that Quick Access Toolbar can be customized for all workbooks, which is what we're doing here, or we can add certain icons just for the current workbook.
So we open this current workbook, we have our own special custom icons that appear, certainly not as good as the great customizable toolbars that we had an Excel 2003.
This is really one of the more disappointing aspects of Excel 2007, as a fact that we're stuck with only this one tiny little toolbar that can be customized.
Unless you want to get into programming, XML and RibbonX, and we'll talk about utilities that will do that later in a series.
Hey, thanks for stopping by, tomorrow we'll see you Friday for a Excel 2003 podcast!
