menu.
2. Select the Start menu’s search text box and type the letters exc to have Windows locate Microsoft Office Excel 2016 on your computer.
If you’re using a device without a physical keyboard, double-tap the right edge of the Touch keyboard that appears on the left edge of the Windows Start menu and screen to make the entire keyboard appear and then tap out the letters exc.
3. Select the Microsoft Excel 2016 option that now appears in the left Programs column on the Start menu.
Pinning Excel to the Windows 7 Start menu
If you use Excel all the time, you may want to make its program option a permanent part of the Windows 7 Start menu. To do this, pin the program option to the Start menu:
1. Start Excel from the Windows Start menu.
To launch Excel, use the appropriate method for your version of Windows, as I outline earlier in this chapter.
After launching Excel, Windows adds Microsoft Office 2010 to the recently used portion on the left side of the Windows Start menu.
2. Click the Start menu and then right-click Microsoft Office Excel 2016 to open its shortcut menu.
3. Choose Pin to Start Menu from the shortcut menu.
After pinning Excel in this manner, the Microsoft Office Excel 2016 option always appears in the upper section of the left column of the Start menu. You can now launch Excel simply by clicking the Start button and then clicking this option.
Pinning Excel to the Windows 7 taskbar
If your computer runs Windows 7, you can add a Microsoft Excel 2016 icon to the standard Internet Explorer, Windows Explorer, and Windows Media Player buttons on its taskbar.
To do this, drag the Microsoft Excel 2016 icon that you’ve either pinned to the Windows Start menu (see “Pinning Excel to the Windows 7 Start menu,” which immediately precedes this section) or that you’ve added as a shortcut to the Windows desktop and drag and drop it into its desired position on the Windows 7 taskbar.
When you’re ready to call it a day and quit Excel, you have several choices for shutting down the program:
✔ Press Alt+FX or Alt+F4 on your physical or Touch keyboard.
✔ Select the Close button (the one with the x) in the upper-right corner of the Excel program window.
✔ Click the Excel program button (the green one with the x on a partially opened book to the immediate left of the Save button on the Quick Access toolbar) followed by the Close option on its drop-down menu.
If you try to exit Excel after working on a workbook and you haven’t saved your latest changes, the program beeps at you and displays an alert box querying whether you want to save your changes. To save your changes before exiting, click the Yes command button. (For detailed information on saving documents, see Book I, Chapter 2.) If you’ve just been playing around in the worksheet and don’t want to save your changes, you can abandon the document by clicking the No button.
If you’re running Excel 2016 on a touchscreen device without a physical keyboard (even one with a relatively large screen such as my 10-inch Microsoft Surface 3 tablet), for heaven’s sake, don’t forget to engage the touch mode on the Quick Launch toolbar as described earlier in this chapter. Turning on Touch mode sufficiently separates the Close button in the very upper-right corner of the Excel screen from the Restore Down button to its immediate left, so that when you tap the Close button, you end up actually exiting Excel rather than just shrinking the Excel program window on the Windows desktop!
Chapter 2
Customizing Excel 2016
In This Chapter
▶ Customizing the Quick Access toolbar
▶ Changing various and sundry Excel program settings
▶ Extending Excel’s capabilities with add-in programs
Chances are good that Excel 2016, as it comes when first installed, is not always the best fit for the way you use the program. For that reason, Excel offers an amazing variety of ways to customize and configure the program’s settings so that they better suit your needs and the way you like to work.
This chapter covers the most important methods for customizing Excel settings and features. The chapter looks at three basic areas where you can tailor the program to your individual needs:
✔ The first place ripe for customization is the Quick Access toolbar. Not only can you control which Excel command buttons (on and off of the Ribbon) appear on this toolbar, but you can also assign macros you create to this toolbar, making them instantly accessible.
✔ The second place where you may want to make extensive modifications is to the default settings (also referred to as options) that control any number of program assumptions and basic behaviors.
✔ The third place where you can customize Excel is in the world of add-ins, those small, specialized utilities (sometimes called applets) that extend the built-in Excel features by attaching themselves to the main Excel program. Excel add-ins provide a wide variety of functions and are available from a wide variety of sources, including the original Excel 2016 program, the Microsoft Office website, and various and sundry third-party vendors.
Tailoring the Quick Access Toolbar to Your Tastes
Excel 2016 enables you to easily make modifications to the Quick Access toolbar, the sole toolbar of the program. When you first launch Excel, this toolbar appears above the Ribbon with the three most commonly used command buttons: Save, Undo, and Redo.
To add other commonly used commands to the Quick Access toolbar, such as New, Open, Email, Quick Print, and the like, simply click the Customize Quick Access toolbar button and choose this command from the drop-down menu.
Excel 2016 makes it super-easy to add a command from any tab on the Ribbon to the
