Datasheet

10
Understanding the Ribbon
Tabs on the Ribbon
Tab Purpose
Home This tab helps you format and edit a worksheet.
Insert This tab helps you add elements such as tables, charts, PivotTables, hyperlinks, headers, and footers.
Page Layout This tab helps you set up a worksheet for printing, by setting elements such as margins, page size and
orientation, and page breaks.
Formulas This tab helps you add formulas and functions to a worksheet.
Data This tab helps you import and query data, outline a worksheet, sort and filter information, validate and
consolidate data, and perform What-If analysis.
Review This tab helps you proof a worksheet for spelling errors, and also contains other proofing tools. From this
tab, you can add comments to a worksheet, protect and share a workbook, and track changes that others
make to the workbook.
View This tab helps you view your worksheet in a variety of ways. You can show or hide worksheet elements
such as gridlines, column letters, and row numbers. You can also zoom in or out.
T
o accomplish tasks in Excel, you use
commands that appear on the Ribbon. New
to Excel 2007, the Ribbon fundamentally
changes the way you work in Excel compared to earlier
versions of Excel. You no longer open menus to find
commands; buttons for commands appear on the
Ribbon. By default, the Ribbon contains the commands
most commonly used to complete an Excel task. Do
not worry if you do not find a particular command on
the Ribbon; it is still available and, if you use it often,
you can add it to the Quick Access Toolbar, which
appears at the top of the Ribbon. See Chapter 30 for
details on customizing the Quick Access Toolbar.
On the Ribbon, in addition to the Office Button ( )
and the Quick Access Toolbar, you find tabs, which
take the place of menus in Excel 2007. Each tab
contains a collection of buttons that you use to
perform a particular action. On each tab, commands
are grouped together. For example, on the Home tab,
you find seven groups: Clipboard, Font, Alignment,
Number, Styles, Cells, and Editing. In the lower-left
corner of some groups, you see a dialog box launcher
icon ( ) that you can click to see additional options
that you can set for the group.
By default, the Ribbon contains seven tabs, as
described in the following table.
In addition to these seven tabs, Excel displays
contextual tabs, which are tabs that appear because
you are performing a particular task. For example,
when you select a chart in a workbook, Excel adds
the Chart Tools tab behind the View tab. The Chart
Tools tab contains three tabs of its own: Design,
Layout, and Format. As soon as you select
something other than the chart in the workbook,
the Chart Tools tab and its three sub-tabs disappear.
To use the commands on the Ribbon, you simply
click a button. If you prefer to use a keyboard,
you can press the Alt key; Excel displays keyboard
characters that you can press to select , tools
on the Quick Access Toolbar, and tabs on the
Ribbon. If you press a key to display a tab on the
Ribbon, Excel then displays all the keyboard
characters you can press to select a particular
command on the Ribbon.
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