See also
Why changes were made in Microsoft®
Office Excel® 2007
- Instead of having 30 or so undisplayed toolbars, and commands buried on menus,
you now have one control center that brings the essentials together.
- People using Excel favor a core set of commands, which they tend to use over and over. Those commands are now the most prominent.
Make the Ribbon smaller
Whichever tab is the active one, click it twice.
The Ribbon and its commands temporarily go away.
To bring it back, click any tab once. Or right-click any button on the Ribbon and click Minimize the Ribbon. To bring the Ribbon back, right-click a tab, and click Minimize the Ribbon again.
What happened to the File menu?
In Excel 2007, the File menu has been replaced with the Microsoft Office Button
. Click this button in the upper-left corner of the window to get the same basic commands you've used in the past to open, save, and print your workbooks.
You'll also find here the program settings that control things like the R1C1 reference style, how many blank sheets are in a new workbook, and which direction the cursor goes after you press ENTER.
Click Excel Options at the bottom of this
menu, and then click any of the categories in the list on the left.
In previous versions of Excel you could set options in the Options dialog box, opened from the Tools menu. Now many of those options are available via the Microsoft Office Button, where they are more visible, and conveniently close at hand when you start work on old files or new ones.
Page Layout view
Page Layout view is new in Excel 2007. If you have worked in Print Layout view in Microsoft Office Word, this new view in Excel will look familiar to you.
In Page Layout view there are page margins at the top, sides, and bottom of the worksheet, and a bit of blue space between worksheets. There are rulers at the top and side that you can use to adjust margins. You can turn the margins on and off as you need them.
It's very easy to add headers and footers in Page Layout view. There's a header and footer area at the top and bottom of the page. As you type in this area, the Header
& Footer Tools open.
Tip
You can also enter headers and footers by clicking the Insert tab. Then in the Text group, click Header & Footer. All the commands to enter headers and footers are automatically displayed. Or
on the Page Layout tab, in the
Page Setup group, click Print Titles. That opens the Page Setup dialog box. Click the Header/Footer tab and enter headers and footers as you did in previous versions of Excel.
To change views, click the View tab, and select a view in the Workbook Views group. Or select a view by clicking a button on the View
toolbar 
in the bottom right of the window.
To change the page view in which Excel opens, click the Microsoft Office Button
, click Excel Options at the bottom of this menu, and
select
Popular.
Under When creating new workbooks, select an option in Default view for new sheets.
Different screen resolutions can change what you see
If the screen resolution on your computer is low, for example 800 by 600, a few groups on the Ribbon will display just the group name instead of all the commands in the group. In that case, you will need to click the arrow on the group to display the commands.
Whatever resolution you use, if you make the Excel window smaller, at a certain point some groups will display only the group names, and you will need to click the arrow on the group to display all the commands.
If you work on a Tablet PC with a smaller screen, you'll notice that the Ribbon adjusts to show you smaller versions of the tabs and groups. If you have a larger screen, the Ribbon adjusts to show you larger versions of the tabs and groups.
Put commands on your own toolbar
If you use commands every day that are not as quickly available as you would like, you can easily add them to the Quick Access Toolbar, which is above the Ribbon.
For example, if you use AutoFilter every
day, and you don't want to have to click the Data tab to access the Filter command, you can add the Filter button to the Quick Access Toolbar.
Quick customization
The toolbar can be customized in several different ways:
- You can add buttons to the toolbar by right-clicking any button you want and then clicking
Add to Quick Access Toolbar.
- You can click the command Customize Quick Access Toolbar, which appears
when you right-click any button.
In the dialog box that opens, choose from the commands available.
- To move the toolbar to its own row just below the Ribbon,
click the arrow on the end of the toolbar, and then click Show Below the Ribbon. To move the toolbar above the Ribbon,
follow the same steps but click Show Above the Ribbon.
Delete a button from the Quick Access Toolbar
- Right-click a button on the toolbar.
- Click Remove from Quick Access Toolbar.
Using the new keyboard shortcuts
The new keyboard shortcuts have a new name: Key Tips. You press ALT to make the Key Tip badges appear. You'll see Key Tips for all Ribbon tabs, the Quick Access Toolbar, and the Microsoft Office Button.
Press the key for the tab you want to display. This makes all the Key Tip badges for that tab's buttons appear. Then, press the key for the button you want.
Keyboard shortcuts of old that begin with CTRL are all still intact. For example, CTRL+C still copies to the clipboard, and CTRL+V still pastes from the clipboard.
Note
Most of the old ALT+ menu shortcuts still work. However, you will need to know the full shortcut from memory — you'll have no screen reminders of what letters to press.
Think back to a previous version of Office, when you pressed ALT+E to open the Edit menu and then you pressed the underlined letter in one of the commands on the menu. You can still press ALT, and then press one of the old menu keys E (Edit), V (View), I (Insert), and so on. But a menu won't open. Instead, a box will pop up saying you're using an Office 2007 access key. If you know the entire key sequence, just carry on and initiate the command. If you don't know the sequence, press ESC and use the Key Tip badges instead.
How to work with people who don't have Excel 2007
In Excel 2007, you can open files created in previous versions of Excel, from Excel 95 through Excel 2003.
- When you save a file that was originally created in a previous version, the automatic option in the Save As dialog box is to save it as the previous version.
- When you save a file as a previous version, if any 2007 features are not compatible with the previous version, a Compatibility Checker tells you so.
Note that when you open an Excel file created in a previous version, or when you save a file created in 2007
as a previous version, Compatibility Mode is automatically turned on. It will say Compatibility Mode at the very top of the window.
For example, if your Excel 2007 worksheet contains 100,000 rows of data (more rows is a new feature), you'll be informed before you save that rows beyond 65,636 will be dropped off. That way, you can first transfer that data to another worksheet. Of course, if you know from the start that you'll be saving your file to a previous version, it's a good idea not to fill data in beyond row 65,636 and column 256 (more columns is another new feature).
The Compatibility Checker runs automatically. You can also run it manually if you wonder whether any features in a workbook will be incompatible with previous versions. Click the Microsoft Office Button
, point to Prepare, and then click Run Compatibility Checker.
- If you want to both save in a previous version and have all the Excel 2007 features, save a copy in 2007 too, as an Excel Workbook.
- Colleagues who have Excel versions 2000 through 2003 (and the latest patches and service packs) can work in your 2007 files. When they click on your document, they will be asked if they want to download a converter that will let them open your document.
Why the file format change was made
The new 2007 file format means improvements to Excel. The new file format is based on XML (Extensible Markup Language) and embraces the Office Open XML Formats. This is the new default file format for Microsoft Office Word 2007, Excel 2007, and PowerPoint® 2007. You don't have to understand XML. Just keep in mind that the new XML-based format:
- Helps make your documents safer by separating files that contain scripts or macros, making it easier to identify and block unwanted code or macros.
- Helps make your document file sizes smaller.
- Helps make your documents less susceptible to damage.
