Excel 2016 All-in-One For Dummies. Harvey Greg

2016 at the top of its result list.

Telling Cortana to Start Excel 2016 for you

      If you want Cortana, the voice-activated online Windows 10 assistant, to launch Excel 2016 for you, click the microphone icon in the Ask Me Anything text box and then when she displays the listening prompt, say “Cortana, start Microsoft Excel 2016.”

Starting Excel from the Windows 8 Start screen

      When starting Excel 2016 from the Windows 8 Start screen, you simply select the Excel 2016 program tile either by clicking it if you have a mouse available or tapping it with your finger or stylus if you’re running Windows 8 on a touchscreen device.

      If you can’t locate the Excel 2016 tile among those displayed on the Start screen, use the Search feature to find the application and pin it to the Windows 8 Start screen:

      1. From the Start screen, begin typing exc on your physical or Touch keyboard.

      Windows 8 displays Excel 2016 in the list of programs under Apps on the left side of the screen.

      2. Right-click the Excel 2016 button in the Apps list on the left side of the screen.

      On a touchscreen device, the equivalent to the right-click of the mouse is to tap and hold the Excel 2016 menu item until a circle appears around your finger or stylus. Then, when you remove your finger or stylus from the screen, the shortcut menu appears.

      3. Select the Pin to Start option from the menu bar that appears at the bottom of the screen.

      After pinning an Excel 2016 tile to the Windows 8 Start screen, you can move it by dragging and dropping it in your desired block.

Starting Excel from the Windows 7 Start menu

      When starting Excel 2016 from the Windows 7 Start menu, you follow these simple steps:

      1. Click the Start button on the Windows taskbar to open the Windows Start menu.

      To select the Start button on a device equipped with a mouse, you click the button. To select the Start button on a touchscreen device with no mouse or touchpad, you tap the button on the touchscreen.

      2. Choose All Programs from the Start menu, choose Microsoft Office 2016, and then choose Excel 2016.

      You can use the Search Programs and Files search box on the Windows 7 Start menu to locate Excel on your computer and launch the program in no time at all:

      1. Click the Start button on the Windows 7 taskbar to open the Windows Start menu.

      2. Select the Start menu’s search text box and type the letters exc to have Windows locate Microsoft Office Excel 2016 on your computer.

      If you’re using a device without a physical keyboard, double-tap the right edge of the Touch keyboard that appears on the left edge of the Windows Start menu and screen to make the entire keyboard appear and then tap out the letters exc.

      3. Select the Microsoft Excel 2016 option that now appears in the left Programs column on the Start menu.

       Pinning Excel to the Windows 7 Start menu

      If you use Excel all the time, you may want to make its program option a permanent part of the Windows 7 Start menu. To do this, pin the program option to the Start menu:

      1. Start Excel from the Windows Start menu.

      To launch Excel, use the appropriate method for your version of Windows, as I outline earlier in this chapter.

      After launching Excel, Windows adds Microsoft Office 2010 to the recently used portion on the left side of the Windows Start menu.

      2. Click the Start menu and then right-click Microsoft Office Excel 2016 to open its shortcut menu.

      3. Choose Pin to Start Menu from the shortcut menu.

      After pinning Excel in this manner, the Microsoft Office Excel 2016 option always appears in the upper section of the left column of the Start menu. You can now launch Excel simply by clicking the Start button and then clicking this option.

       Pinning Excel to the Windows 7 taskbar

      If your computer runs Windows 7, you can add a Microsoft Excel 2016 icon to the standard Internet Explorer, Windows Explorer, and Windows Media Player buttons on its taskbar.

      To do this, drag the Microsoft Excel 2016 icon that you’ve either pinned to the Windows Start menu (see “Pinning Excel to the Windows 7 Start menu,” which immediately precedes this section) or that you’ve added as a shortcut to the Windows desktop and drag and drop it into its desired position on the Windows 7 taskbar.

       After you pin a Microsoft Excel 2016 icon to the Windows 7 taskbar, the button appears on the Windows taskbar each time you start your computer, and you can launch the Excel program simply by single-clicking its Quick Launch button.

When it’s quitting time

      When you’re ready to call it a day and quit Excel, you have several choices for shutting down the program:

      ✔ Press Alt+FX or Alt+F4 on your physical or Touch keyboard.

      ✔ Select the Close button (the one with the x) in the upper-right corner of the Excel program window.

      ✔ Click the Excel program button (the green one with the x on a partially opened book to the immediate left of the Save button on the Quick Access toolbar) followed by the Close option on its drop-down menu.

      If you try to exit Excel after working on a workbook and you haven’t saved your latest changes, the program beeps at you and displays an alert box querying whether you want to save your changes. To save your changes before exiting, click the Yes command button. (For detailed information on saving documents, see Book I, Chapter 2.) If you’ve just been playing around in the worksheet and don’t want to save your changes, you can abandon the document by clicking the No button.

       Quitting Excel 2016 on a touchscreen device

      If you’re running Excel 2016 on a touchscreen device without a physical keyboard (even one with a relatively large screen such as my 10-inch Microsoft Surface 3 tablet), for heaven’s sake, don’t forget to engage the touch mode on the Quick Launch toolbar as described earlier in this chapter. Turning on Touch mode sufficiently separates the Close button in the very upper-right corner of the Excel screen from the Restore Down button to its immediate left, so that when you tap the Close button, you end up actually exiting Excel rather than just shrinking the Excel program window on the Windows desktop!

Chapter 2

      Customizing Excel 2016

       In This Chapter

      ▶ Customizing the Quick Access toolbar

      ▶ Changing various and sundry Excel program settings

      ▶ Extending Excel’s capabilities with add-in programs

      Chances are good that Excel 2016, as it comes when first installed, is not always the best fit for the way you use the program. For that reason, Excel offers an amazing variety of ways to customize and configure the program’s settings so that they better suit your needs and the way you like to work.

      This chapter covers the most important methods for customizing Excel settings and features. The chapter looks at three basic areas where you can tailor the program to your individual needs:

      ✔ The first place ripe for customization is the Quick Access toolbar. Not only can you control which Excel command buttons (on and off of the Ribbon) appear on this toolbar, but you can also assign macros you create to this toolbar, making them instantly accessible.

      ✔ The second place where you may want to make extensive modifications