Datasheet

Pinning Excel to the Start menu

If you use Excel all the time, you may want to make its program option a per-

manent part of the Windows Start menu. To do this, you pin the program

option to the Start menu (and the steps for doing this are the same in

Windows XP as they are in Windows Vista):

1. Start Excel from the Windows Start menu.

In launching Excel, use the appropriate method for your version of

Windows as outlined in the “Starting Excel from the Windows Vista Start

menu” or the “Starting Excel from the Windows XP Start menu” section

earlier in this chapter.

After launching Excel, Windows adds Microsoft Office 2007 to the

recently used portion on the left side of the Windows Start menu.

2. Click the Start menu and then right-click Microsoft Excel 2007 on the

Start menu to open its shortcut menu.

3. Click Pin to Start menu on the shortcut menu.

After pinning Excel in this manner, the Microsoft Office Excel 2007 option

always appears in the upper section of the left-hand column of the Start

menu and you can then launch Excel simply by clicking the Start button and

then click this option.

Creating an Excel desktop shortcut

for Windows Vista

Some people prefer having the Excel Program icon appear on the Windows

desktop so that they can launch the program from the desktop by double-

clicking this program icon. To create an Excel program shortcut for Windows

Vista, you follow these steps:

1. Click the Start button on the Windows taskbar.

The Start menu opens where you click the Start Search text box.

2. Click the Start Search text box and type excel.exe.

Excel.exe is the name of the executable program file that runs Excel.

After finding this file on your hard disk, you can create a desktop short-

cut from it that launches the program.

Part I: Getting In on the Ground Floor

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