let's begin by taking a look at your
Excel environment and some of the things
you can do to set up your Excel
environment to make working and Excel
easier for you down at the bottom of the
Excel window you have the sheet tabs
which are each separate worksheets they
remind me of pages in a book all the
sheets together make up the workbook or
spreadsheet to the right is a zoom tool
you can zoom in and out by left clicking
the slider and dragging it back and
forth you can also use the scroll bar
above to scroll left and right in the
worksheet in this same area you also
have access to the page reviews tabs by
default the normal View is selected but
you can change to page layouts or page
break view by left clicking either
option let's just leave it as a default
at the top of the page you have the
ribbon which is the new menu system that
is arranged in tabs on each tab you'll
find commands organized in groups above
the ribbon you'll see the quick access
toolbar one of the simplest things you
can do to make accomplishing basic tasks
faster is to customize the quick access
toolbar the quick access toolbar resides
right next to the Microsoft Office
button and all of the 2007 applications
and allows you to reach commonly used
commands quickly by default the save
undo and redo commands have already been
added to view the commands you can add
simply click the down arrow next to the
quick access toolbar and the menu will
appear
let's see sort ascending and sort
descending or to commands that are used
often in Excel depending on the type of
spreadsheet you work with to add the
sort ascending command just left-click
it to select it and now we can see that
it appears on the toolbar as you can see
a check mark appeared beside sort
ascending this means it is selected and
appears on the toolbar to remove a
command just left-click any command with
the checkmark and it will no longer
appear see how easy it is to add and
remove commands I'm actually going to
add the sort of sending and sort
descending commands I think I may need
to use them when I start working with
some of my spreadsheets you can add more
commands than the ones that appear on
the drop-down list just select more
commands and from the dialog box that
appears select the command you wish to
add click the Add button and then click
OK this gives you the ability to really
customize Excel while working with Excel
you may find that there are times that
you want to work on your worksheet
without the ribbon Microsoft gives you
the ability to minimize and maximize the
ribbon to minimize the ribbon click the
drop down arrow next to the quick access
toolbar so let's minimize ribbon from
the list and the ribbon disappears click
the arrow again you can see that a
checkmark appears next to minimize the
ribbon which indicates this feature is
toggled on to maximize the ribbon just
to let minimize the ribbon to toggle the
feature off and the ribbon will appear
in addition to the quick access toolbar
and the ribbon the Microsoft Office
button appears at the top of your window
when you left click the button you
access a menu from this menu you can
create a new document open existing
documents save documents in a variety of
ways and print you can also add security
features send the document publish and
close the document you can also click
the Excel options button to open a
dialog box where you can make some
changes to the default settings in the
popular section show many toolbar is
selected
this shows the information that appears
when you hover over a command like this
if you're new to excel this information
is helpful if you're a power user this
might be more of an annoyance you can
turn this feature off here if you like
I'm actually going to leave this on
there are a lot of things you can change
here for instance if you want for
worksheets to appear by default you can
change that here in the formulas section
there are some more complicated settings
as you learn more about excel and become
proficient at using it you may want to
revisit these settings but for now we'll
leave it as the default well I'm pretty
comfortable with the setup of my
workbook so now that I know where
everything is I think I'll get started