XL 2010: Is Excel Help Really Helpful ??

[monirg]

Hello;

1) I don’t recall ever been able to find what I want in Excel Help, or even close to what I want!
Is this a common observation ??
Is there a trick on how to use Help (the ? icon on the top right of excel window) ??

2) I was looking the other day for some info on custom toolbars.
I opened XL 2010, clicked the ? image, and searched for:
custom toolbar
Excel came up with about 30 topics:
-> How to create macros
-> Run a macro
-> Create or delete a PivotTable
-> Minimize the ribbon
-> Create a chart
-> Check spelling
-> Change chart axis
-> OLAP PivotTable report
-> and many more “irrelevant” topics

3) I accessed most of the above topics and read the articles, hoping to find something about “custom toolbars”, such as:
>how to create/modify/delete toolbars in XL 2010
>how to name a toolbar for easy ref.
>are they available in XL 2010
>can one create a local toolbar applicable only to a particular w/b or it has to be available globally to all XL files on the system
>does XL 2010 recognize custom toolbars created in earlier versions
>etc..

4) Nothing, even remotely related to the searched topic.
I tried different combinations of the keywords before I gave up!
The same could generally be said about XL 2010 VBA Help.

Would appreciate your comments.

 

[Derek Brown]

Excel toolbars were replaced by the Ribbon at Excel 2007, so you may get a better result searching for 'ribbon'.
If searching on Google, look for 'Ribbonx' instead.

 

[monirg]

Derek;

Will try your suggestion.

Thank you.

 

[xenou]

Hi,

For RibbonX I'm starting to see more and more good articles posted on the web:

ron debruin has with some very good stuff that I used for my first steps (complete with sample files):
http://www.rondebruin.nl/ribbon.htm
He also has a nice suggestion for a macro menu on the QAT:
http://www.rondebruin.nl/qat.htm

You will want to download the Custom UI Editor Tool he mentions in his (first) article - this greatly simplifies the process of editing the Ribbon XML.


For office help, I've never looked at the ribbon material in there (if any) but I do find that the Help files are generally more helpful when I uncheck the box for searching online when using help (buried in privacy settings somewhere). Note: MS occasionally pushes out updates for local help files so if you use this option stay up to date on windows updates - these are not critical updates so they may not be installed automatically depending on your settings.

 

[RoryA]

It's a generally accepted theory that Excel's help system gets worse with every version. I can rarely find what I want in it - Google is quicker. And don't get me started on the current MSKB search.

 

[Smitty]

If it's any consolation, the folks at MS have recognized that the help features are an issue and they've been trying to work on it. MS realized that the "standard" help was pretty hard in the first place, so they started reaching outside of their own ranks. For instance you might notice things like links to non-MS material, like Ron's post mentioned above.

I'll be happy to forward any comments to them, in fact, I'm going to send one of the lead help managers the link to this thread (although I won't give out his/her name, because I want to remain on speaking terms ).

 

[monirg]

... in fact, I'm going to send one of the lead help managers the link to this thread.

That would be greatly appreciated.

Regards.

 

[hrlngrv]

To be fair, it depends how far back you go. Excel 97's old .hlp files were pretty good, and I still keep copies of them, even remapped [F1] via Application.OnKey to open the Excel 97 help files rather than the 'new & improved' ones.

Excel 97's were better than Excel 5's (never used Excel 95, so don't know). I used Excel 2000 only very briefly, but I don't recall it being worse than Excel 97's. Since it covered VBA 6.x, it's arguably better because more complete.

But then came Excel 2002/XP, and it's .chm files were bad. Excel 2003's were worse, never had the, er, pleasure of using Excel 2007, but Excel 2010's stink. Much worse than Excel 97's.

 

[AndyTampa]

In answer to the first question in this thread...I have never, I repeat, never found anything in Excel or Word 2010 Help that I was looking for. I've only gotten irrelevant answers from it even if I search for a single word.

 

[SydneyGeek]

That's why Google is almost always the better option.
I've found that the VBA help is not too bad, but I agree; the standard help is a waste of electrons.

Denis