Excel 2024: Many Task Panes Now Collapse into a Tab Strip
September 16, 2024 - by Bill Jelen
There are several features in Excel that open a task pane on the right side of Excel. Sometimes, you would end up with 2, 3, or even 4 task panes open and it would cover your entire screen.
In February 2020, Microsoft 365 started collapsing task panes when more than 1 is open. A tab strip on the right side holds all the open task panes.
In the figure here, five task panes are available. The fourth is highlighted in grey and is the currently open PivotTable Fields task pane.
Click the icon to collapse the currently open task pane.
Note
It is possible to collapse and open the task panes using the right arrow key to collapse and the left arrow key to open. In this state, you can move up and down the task panes using the arrow keys. However, it is also possible for focus to get stuck in the task pane strip and you can't use your arrows to navigate around the grid. In this case, press the F6 key three times to return focus to the grid.
Tip
What if you like having two task panes open at the same time? Grab the title of a task pane and drop it on the grid. Or grab the title of a task pane and drag it off the left side of the worksheet. This will dock the task pane on the left. Anything docked on the left will never collapse. You could even dock four task panes on the left if you needed to.
This article is an excerpt from MrExcel 2024 Igniting Excel
Title photo by Ivan Shilov on Unsplash
