Excel: Basic Customization

 

Objectives

 

To display both toolbars:

Excel has two toolbars – the standard toolbar and the formatting toolbar. However, by default, it displays both of them on the same line, which means that they overlap and you cannot see all of the buttons on either toolbar. You end up with something like this:

 

To see all of the buttons on both toolbars, choose:

"Tools" | "Customize" and click on the "Options" tab. Then turn on the checkbox labeled Show standard and formatting toolbars on two rows.

 

Your toolbars should now look something like this:

 

To display all menu options:

By default, Excel displays only the most commonly-used menu items. This can make it difficult to find a menu item that you don't use very often. You can make Excel show you all of the menu options by selecting the following from the menu:

"Tools" | "Customize" and click on the "Options" tab. Then turn on the checkbox that says Always show full menus.

 

To change the default location for saving files:

By default, Excel will try to save all of your files in your My Documents folder. The My Documents folder is on your C drive and will not be available to you from any other computer on the network. You should always save your files to your network drive so you can retrieve your files from any computer on campus. To change the default file location for Excel, select the following from the menu:

"Tools" | "Options" and click on the "General" tab. Then in the default file location, enter:

\\thomas\students\xxx

where the xxx is your user name.

 

To change the size of the most recently-used file list:

Excel keeps track of up to nine of the most recently-used files on the file menu, but by default, it only shows you the last four files that you have used. To increase this to the maximum of nine, select the following from the menu:

"Tools" | "Options" and click on the "General" tab. Then in the "Recently used file list", enter the number 9, and turn on the check box.

 

To change the time between backups:

Excel will make a backup of your work every 10 minutes by default. Change this to one minute so you never have to worry about losing more than a minute's worth of work:

"Tools" | "Options" and click on the "Save" tab. In the "Settings" area, set the "Save autorecover info every" to 1 minute, and turn on the check box.

 

To change the direction the cursor moves after pressing the "Enter" key:

By default, Excel moves the cursor down to the next cell when you press the "Enter" key. However, there are times when you may be entering rows of data rather than columns of data and you want the cursor to move to the right instead of down (Excel also gives you the option of moving the cursor up or left, but those options are probably not used very often). To change the direction the cursor moves after pressing "Enter", select the following from the menu:

"Tools" | "Options" and click on the "Edit" tab. In the "Settings' area, set the "Move selection after Enter" value to what you want.

 

 

Revised 2004.11.29