Friday 15 August 2008

Lesson 1 10: Customize the Quick Access Toolbar and preview the printout

This lesson (along with 31 more) is available free of charge from my site at: http://www.LearnMicrosoftExcel.com.


In Excel 2007 you may have just one custom toolbar: the Quick Access Toolbar. In this lesson we'll add some useful buttons to the Quick Access Toolbar to save a few clicks.

The Quick Access Toolbar is one of the keys to being really productive with Excel 2007. This lesson will introduce you to the main features.

1    If it isn't already open,
open the Wealth of Nations sample worksheet.

2    Preview how the Life Expectancy worksheet will look when printed.

Click the Life Expectancy tab at the bottom of the worksheet to open the Life Expectancy worksheet. Click OfficeàPrintàPreview:


A preview of the how the page will print is displayed.

Notice that the ribbon now displays a contextual menu because there are only a few options open to you when previewing.


You can click the Next Page and Previous Page buttons to move through the print preview and use the Zoom button to magnify the page for a clearer view.

When you've finished playing with the Print Preview click the Close Print Preview button to return to the workbook.

3    Add a Print Preview button to the Quick Access Toolbar.

Print Preview is a very useful feature and you'll probably use it a lot. Every time you use it, however, it is going to take three clicks of the mouse. Wouldn't it be better if you could show a print preview with just one click?

To do this click the Customize Quick Access Toolbar button (see sidebar) and then click on the Print Preview item in the drop-down list. A new button now appears on the Quick Access Toolbar. You are now able to Print Preview your work with a single click of the mouse.


4    Add custom buttons to the Print Preview toolbar.

The More Commands... option is available when you click the Customize Quick Access Toolbar button. This enables you to add any command in Excel to the toolbar. But there's an easier way!

5    Add a Font Color button to the Quick Access Toolbar.

Click the Home tab on the ribbon (if it isn't already selected) and then right-click on the Font Color button at the bottom right of the Font Group.


Choose the Add to Quick Access Toolbar item. A Font Color button is added to the Quick Access Toolbar.


6    Remove a button from the Quick Access Toolbar.

Right-click on the Font Color button on the Quick Access Toolbar. Choose Remove from Quick Access Toolbar from the shortcut menu.

7    Add separators to make heavily customized Quick Access toolbars more readable.

You probably noticed that one of the options in step 4 was <separator>. You can use this to split icons into logical groups. Here's a screen grab of my own Quick Access Toolbar:


There is supplementary information available via sidebars in the full PDF version of the free course. The limitations of HTML don't allow this page to be easily laid out with sidebars. You can download the free course as PDF files for printing from http://www.LearnMicrosoftExcel.com.

No comments: