In Excel 2003, there is a cool button lurking in the Forms toolbar. This button gives you one click access to show/hide gridlines. I am not a big fan of hiding gridlines, but when it is only one click away, I find myself actually doing so. Also, another tip about using PgDn and PgUp to move between worksheets or between screenfuls of columns. Episode 775 shows 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. Well, it’s Friday.
I have just a couple of quick tips today.
Both of these came from Al. Al was in one of my seminars down in Dallas at the boot camp.
The first one is kind of interesting and it really only applies well to Excel 2003.
We happen to be looking at VIEW, TOOLBARS, FORMS, the forms toolbar, and this is if we want to draw some on-sheet controls, and, actually, next week, we're going to take a look at adding some option buttons to a sheet, but while we have this toolbar, there, in the lower left-hand corner, is a button called TOGGLE GRID, and while this might be used for a form, it's also really just useful to hide the gridlines in a worksheet.
Now, of course, we could do this with TOOLS, OPTIONS, VIEW, GRID LINES, but, you know, that's 4 or 5 clicks away and I can deal with the grid lines, but if it was just a single click, I have to admit there would be times where I would turn the gridlines off.
So, if we go to VIEW, TOOLBARS, show the forms toolbar, we can take this button and add it right to any of our toolbars.
Now, the easy way to do this is to hold down CONTROL and ALT, CONTROL and ALT, and then drag the button to any toolbar.
Very easy.
Now we have it up there.
I'll close the forms toolbar and we can turn gridlines on or off.
On or off.
Of course, the longer way is to go to TOOLS, CUSTOMIZE, and then find that exact same icon in the FORMS group.
All the way at the bottom, we have TOGGLE GRID, and you can drag that to your toolbar.
Now, in Excel 2007, I cannot find this icon anywhere, and it turns out, in Excel 2007, they in theory made life easier for us.
If we would just go to the PAGE LAYOUT tab, we have a checkbox here, whether we want to VIEW or turn off the gridline.
So, relatively easy to do if you switch to PAGE LAYOUT tab.
I did find one icon called SHOW/HIDE and SHOW/HIDE allows me to open basically a dropdown where I can choose whether I want to show gridlines or the formula bar or not.
So, it's 2 clicks here.
Actually, I think was better in 2003 where we had a single click.
Now, one more tip [ unintelligible – 02:13 ].
You know, I know a lot of times if we have multiple worksheets, you know that you can move from worksheet to worksheet very quickly using CONTROL+PAGEDOWN, CONTROL+PAGEUP.
So, here, I’m on SHEET 1.
CONTROL+PAGEDOWN to SHEET 2, SHEET 3, SHEET 4, but a really cool tip, the one that I had never learned before, was that if we need to move across a worksheet, so we have a really long worksheet, if we do ALT+PAGEDOWN, that takes us one screen fold to the right.
So, CONTROL+PAGEDOWN will allow us to fly through a worksheet and CONTROL+PAGEUP will allow us to go back to the left.
Very cool way to navigate between many columns or screen folds of data in a really wide spreadsheet.
So, a couple of cool tricks there: being able to turn on and off grid lines, and using ALT+PAGEDOWN or ALT+PAGEUP to move back and forth across a worksheet.
Well, thanks for stopping by.
We'll see you next time for another netcast from MrExcel.
I have just a couple of quick tips today.
Both of these came from Al. Al was in one of my seminars down in Dallas at the boot camp.
The first one is kind of interesting and it really only applies well to Excel 2003.
We happen to be looking at VIEW, TOOLBARS, FORMS, the forms toolbar, and this is if we want to draw some on-sheet controls, and, actually, next week, we're going to take a look at adding some option buttons to a sheet, but while we have this toolbar, there, in the lower left-hand corner, is a button called TOGGLE GRID, and while this might be used for a form, it's also really just useful to hide the gridlines in a worksheet.
Now, of course, we could do this with TOOLS, OPTIONS, VIEW, GRID LINES, but, you know, that's 4 or 5 clicks away and I can deal with the grid lines, but if it was just a single click, I have to admit there would be times where I would turn the gridlines off.
So, if we go to VIEW, TOOLBARS, show the forms toolbar, we can take this button and add it right to any of our toolbars.
Now, the easy way to do this is to hold down CONTROL and ALT, CONTROL and ALT, and then drag the button to any toolbar.
Very easy.
Now we have it up there.
I'll close the forms toolbar and we can turn gridlines on or off.
On or off.
Of course, the longer way is to go to TOOLS, CUSTOMIZE, and then find that exact same icon in the FORMS group.
All the way at the bottom, we have TOGGLE GRID, and you can drag that to your toolbar.
Now, in Excel 2007, I cannot find this icon anywhere, and it turns out, in Excel 2007, they in theory made life easier for us.
If we would just go to the PAGE LAYOUT tab, we have a checkbox here, whether we want to VIEW or turn off the gridline.
So, relatively easy to do if you switch to PAGE LAYOUT tab.
I did find one icon called SHOW/HIDE and SHOW/HIDE allows me to open basically a dropdown where I can choose whether I want to show gridlines or the formula bar or not.
So, it's 2 clicks here.
Actually, I think was better in 2003 where we had a single click.
Now, one more tip [ unintelligible – 02:13 ].
You know, I know a lot of times if we have multiple worksheets, you know that you can move from worksheet to worksheet very quickly using CONTROL+PAGEDOWN, CONTROL+PAGEUP.
So, here, I’m on SHEET 1.
CONTROL+PAGEDOWN to SHEET 2, SHEET 3, SHEET 4, but a really cool tip, the one that I had never learned before, was that if we need to move across a worksheet, so we have a really long worksheet, if we do ALT+PAGEDOWN, that takes us one screen fold to the right.
So, CONTROL+PAGEDOWN will allow us to fly through a worksheet and CONTROL+PAGEUP will allow us to go back to the left.
Very cool way to navigate between many columns or screen folds of data in a really wide spreadsheet.
So, a couple of cool tricks there: being able to turn on and off grid lines, and using ALT+PAGEDOWN or ALT+PAGEUP to move back and forth across a worksheet.
Well, thanks for stopping by.
We'll see you next time for another netcast from MrExcel.
