Jon has designed a worksheet in Excel that he wants others to use. However, he does not want them to realize they are using Excel. How can he obscure the fact that we are in Excel? Episode 746 will show you how.
This blog is the video podcast companion to the book, Learn Excel 97-2007 from MrExcel. Download a new two minute video every workday to learn one of the 377 tips from the book!
This blog is the video podcast companion to the book, Learn Excel 97-2007 from MrExcel. Download a new two minute video every workday to learn one of the 377 tips from the book!
Transcript of the video:
Hey. Welcome back to the MrExcel netcast. I’m Bill Jelen.
Today, a question was sent in.
Someone had designed a really nice spreadsheet that basically was a forum where people were going to enter data, and he said, I don't want it to look like Excel.
Is there a way to make it kind of obscure, the fact that this is running in Excel?
And there's a couple of tricks that I use.
First thing I do is I go to TOOLS and then OPTIONS.
On the VIEW tab under OPTIONS, we can uncheck everything under WINDOW OPTIONS.
So, uncheck GRIDLINES, the COLUMN HEADERS, OUTLINE SYMBOLS, ZERO VALUES, HORIZONTAL SCROLL BAR, VERTICAL SCROLL BAR, and SHEET TABS, and you start to take away some of the Excel look.
You don't see the grid anymore.
You don't see the tab names.
Under VIEW, I also remove the FORMULA BAR, and then, at the bottom of the screen, the STATUS BAR.
We still have the menu though and it still, you know, kind of looks like Excel.
So, if we go to VIEW, TOOLBARS, and uncheck the STANDARD toolbar, the FORMATTING toolbar, and any other toolbars you might have -- for example, in this case, I have the DRAWING toolbar -- alright, now we're almost there.
We've gotten down to the point where the only thing left is the worksheet menu bar and the words MICROSOFT EXCEL at the top.
What I do for this is I switch over to VBA -- so, ALT+F11 -- and then the IMMEDIATE window is CONTROL+G, and we can say APPLICATION.COMMANDBARS, and then, in (), in “, it's 3 words -- WORKSHEET MENU BAR -- .ENABLED = FALSE, and you'll see that that actually gets rid of the menu bar in Excel.
Now, we'll switch back to VBA.
A couple of other things I do.
Again, in the IMMEDIATE window is, I say APPLICATION.CAPTION = any caption, MY APPLICATION, and that gets rid of the words MICROSOFT EXCEL.
So, instead of Microsoft Excel, it says MY APPLICATION.
We also have book one here.
That'll be the name of your Excel file, and we can control that.
Again, in the IMMEDIATE window, ACTIVEWINDOW.CAPTION = maybe HR FORM.
Switch back to Excel.
Okay.
Now, we've pretty much obscured almost everything.
The icon’s still up there, the little Excel icon, but it says MY APPLICATION HR FORM.
It is still Excel so we can come here and enter values or create charts or anything that we might need to do.
If I hit F11, I'll create a chart from that.
It's still full-featured Excel, it just doesn't look like Excel, and so the people who are sort of, let's say, afraid of Excel won’t realize what's going on.
Great question from Jon.
I want to thank you for stopping by.
We'll see you next time for another netcast from MrExcel.
Today, a question was sent in.
Someone had designed a really nice spreadsheet that basically was a forum where people were going to enter data, and he said, I don't want it to look like Excel.
Is there a way to make it kind of obscure, the fact that this is running in Excel?
And there's a couple of tricks that I use.
First thing I do is I go to TOOLS and then OPTIONS.
On the VIEW tab under OPTIONS, we can uncheck everything under WINDOW OPTIONS.
So, uncheck GRIDLINES, the COLUMN HEADERS, OUTLINE SYMBOLS, ZERO VALUES, HORIZONTAL SCROLL BAR, VERTICAL SCROLL BAR, and SHEET TABS, and you start to take away some of the Excel look.
You don't see the grid anymore.
You don't see the tab names.
Under VIEW, I also remove the FORMULA BAR, and then, at the bottom of the screen, the STATUS BAR.
We still have the menu though and it still, you know, kind of looks like Excel.
So, if we go to VIEW, TOOLBARS, and uncheck the STANDARD toolbar, the FORMATTING toolbar, and any other toolbars you might have -- for example, in this case, I have the DRAWING toolbar -- alright, now we're almost there.
We've gotten down to the point where the only thing left is the worksheet menu bar and the words MICROSOFT EXCEL at the top.
What I do for this is I switch over to VBA -- so, ALT+F11 -- and then the IMMEDIATE window is CONTROL+G, and we can say APPLICATION.COMMANDBARS, and then, in (), in “, it's 3 words -- WORKSHEET MENU BAR -- .ENABLED = FALSE, and you'll see that that actually gets rid of the menu bar in Excel.
Now, we'll switch back to VBA.
A couple of other things I do.
Again, in the IMMEDIATE window is, I say APPLICATION.CAPTION = any caption, MY APPLICATION, and that gets rid of the words MICROSOFT EXCEL.
So, instead of Microsoft Excel, it says MY APPLICATION.
We also have book one here.
That'll be the name of your Excel file, and we can control that.
Again, in the IMMEDIATE window, ACTIVEWINDOW.CAPTION = maybe HR FORM.
Switch back to Excel.
Okay.
Now, we've pretty much obscured almost everything.
The icon’s still up there, the little Excel icon, but it says MY APPLICATION HR FORM.
It is still Excel so we can come here and enter values or create charts or anything that we might need to do.
If I hit F11, I'll create a chart from that.
It's still full-featured Excel, it just doesn't look like Excel, and so the people who are sort of, let's say, afraid of Excel won’t realize what's going on.
Great question from Jon.
I want to thank you for stopping by.
We'll see you next time for another netcast from MrExcel.
