Learn Excel 97 Through Excel 2007 from Mr. Excel (eBook)

Problem: The new ribbon user interface might be great for people new to Excel, but I knew the old Excel perfectly well. Why did Microsoft put pivot tables on the Insert tab instead of the Data tab, where they belong? Strategy: You can use one of many available third-party tools to assistwith the transition. At MrExcel.com, I offer a free tip card that maps each item on the Excel 2003 menu to a tab on the Excel 2007 ribbon. If you have a color printer, download the card and print it for free. Lin Jie was the first to solve the Excel 2007 ribbon confusion. His Classic Excel Menu add-in will add a new menu tab to the Excel 2007 ribbon. This tab replicates the Excel 2003 menu. The add-in sells for $16.95. Versions are also available for Word 2007 and PowerPoint 2007. The second impressive utility is the Toolbar Toggle add-in. This add-in offers a lite version similar to the Classic Excel Menu add-in and alsooffers a full-featured utility that brings back the Excel 2003 menu and toolbars, as well as the ability to customize the toolbars. If you were a fan of customizing toolbars in Excel 2003, you will love the functionalityof this product. With both of these add-ins, you can work in the Excel 2003 menu, and then switch over to the Excel 2007 menu when you need to access new features. Find links to these utilities as well as any others that become available at www.mrexcel.com/excel2007.html. Summary: You can ease the transition to Excel 2007's ribbon interfaceby using a third-party solution. Problem: I can't find anything on the Excel 2007 ribbon. Strategy: Invest in a wide-screen monitor. The Office 2007 experiencedramatically improves at a 1440x900 resolution. When you reduce the size of the Excel window, Excel automatically starts consolidating ribbon options into smaller icons and then groups. If you open Excel 2007 on a 1440x900 monitor, as shown in Figure 7, youwill be able to see more icons, as well as descriptive text for many of the icons. In Figure 7, for example, the Wrap Text icon (which has never existed in previous versions of Excel) is now labeled. The price of widescreen monitors has dropped in recent years. In thesummer of 2007, I found widescreen monitors on sale at the office supply chains for around $159. Purchasing one of these monitors is a worthwhile investment to help make your Office 2007 experience better. Not only does a widescreen monitor make the ribbon easier to work with, butit enables you to see 21 normal-sized worksheet columns. Additional Details: If you reduce the Excel window down to about four columns wide, Microsoft assumes that you can not possibly be working in something that small, and it hides the ribbon completely.