Excel 2007

The Office Button Replaces the File Menu

In Office 2007, the Microsoft Office Button Office image replaces the File menu. You click on the button to open, save and print your files as shown below. You can still use keyboard shortcuts to open, save and print (CTRL + O, S, and P).

Click on New to create a new workbook. This opens a window from which to choose design templates or a blank template, as well as to create a new workbook from an existing one. This replaces the New Document task pane in Excel 2003.

Views

On the bottom right side of the Excel 2007 window is the View toolbar, which contains three buttons that change the way you view a worksheet. There is also a zoom bar beside the view buttons which allows you to zoom in or out on the content.

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In Normal View PowerPoint image (the first button on the left), you have a regular worksheet and tabbed menus. The second button, the Page Layout View button PowerPoint image, changes the view to facilitate worksheet layout for printing. There are rulers to aid in setting margins and positioning objects. Using your mouse, you can drag the margins to change them when the cursor changes to a two-headed arrow. Also, there are header and footer areas where you can easily type headers and footers. On the Page Layout tab, in the Scale to Fit group, you can shrink the worksheet to fit a certain number of pages or stretch/shrink it to a percentage of its current size.

The third button Page Break Preview button on the View toolbar is Page Break Preview used to quickly see and change page breaks for printing. The automatic page breaks are dotted and the ones you insert are solid lines. You can drag page breaks to new locations or remove manually inserted page breaks by dragging them off of the page. Also, you can right-click any cell and use the shortcut menu to insert page breaks or to reset all page breaks.

The View Menu

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Excel 2007 no longer has toolbars and menus or task panes as in the 2003 version. It has the Ribbon, which has tabs with commands organized into groups. When you click on the View tab, it brings up a Workbook Views group of buttons that also allow you to choose Normal, Page Layout, and Page Break Preview views like the buttons on the bottom of the screen. The next group, the Show/Hide grouping, displays the ruler, gridlines, and Formula or Message bars. The Zoom group lets you zoom in on a part of the worksheet or a selection. The Window group (not shown) lets you arrange your windows, switch windows, freeze panes, and hide or split the current window. The Macros group (not shown) lets you view or record macros by clicking on its dropdown list.

Normal View

In Normal View, the Excel window opens on the Home tab of the Ribbon as shown. The grouping of commands are task-oriented, replacing the dropdown menus in Excel 2003 where many of the commands and menu items were hidden. For example, the Cells grouping on the Home tab has Insert, Delete, and Format buttons with additional options on drop-down menus indicated by the black triangles beside them. Cell insertion, deletion, and formatting were not visible on any toolbars in 2003, but were located on the Insert, Edit, and Format menus, hidden from view.

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The same is true of the Sort & Filter options in the Editing group. They were Data menu items hidden from view. This is the basis of the Ribbon, ease of finding the commands you need.  

The Worksheet Tabs

The bottom of the Excel window in Normal View has three worksheet tabs with a new Insert Worksheet tab.

As in Excel 2003, you can right-click on one of the sheet tabs to access a shortcut menu:

Excel 07 sheet tab shortcut menu image

No longer do you use the Insert menu to insert a worksheet. However, on the Home tab in the Cells group, you can click on the dropdown list by the Insert command as shown and choose "Insert Sheet."

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In this same Cell grouping on the Home tab, "Hide & Unhide" are available on the Format dropdown menu as shown below.

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Protect Sheet and Hide/Unhide commands have been added to the worksheet shortcut menu. These used to be on the Tools & Windows menus, respectively, which no longer exist in Excel 2007. Protect Sheet is now on the Review tab in the Changes group in addition to the worksheet shortcut menu.

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Excel Options

In Excel 2007, the Microsoft Office Button Microsoft Office Button image replaces the File menu and also the Tools menu where Options for the program were set. When you click on the button, at the bottom of the menu is an Excel Options button.

For example, when you click on this button, it opens the following dialog box with "Popular" options selected. Here you can choose the Color scheme for the Office Applications as well as other options shown.

Choosing "Customize" allows you to customize the Quick Access toolbar, adding commands to it from a list of popular commands.

Saving

Click on the Microsoft Office Button Office image to save your document. In Office 2007, the Microsoft Office Button replaces the File menu. You click on the button to open, save and print your file as shown below. You can still use the same keyboard shortcuts to open, save and print (CTRL + O, S, and P).

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When you choose Save As, you have options to save in the new default file format or in the Excel 97-2003 format as well as other formats. Word, Excel, and PowerPoint in Office 2007 have new file formats based on XML. Therefore, they have new file extensions to reflect this--extensions with an X at the end or an M if the file has macros.

If you select the first option, to save as an Excel Workbook, the file extension will be .xlsx. If the file had macros, then it would be .xlsm. If you save it as a template, its file extension would be .xltx. However, you can save it in Excel 97-2003 format. You don't have to though since there is a file convertor that can be downloaded from Microsoft that works with Office 2003 applications allowing them to open the Office 2007 files. Just go to the Download Center to get the Microsoft Office Compatibility Pack for 2007 Office Word, Excel and PowerPoint File Formats.

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The new XML formats allow anyone with an XML editor and a ZIP utility to open Office 2007 files. The ZIP utility is needed because the new XML formatted files are automatically compressed when saved and uncompressed when opened. If you have Microsoft Office 2007, this is automatically done for you.

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