Excel 2007 - okay, I think I got it
Feb. 5th, 2009 10:25 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dreamsharkI finally figured out how the shortcuts work for the icons on the customizable toolbar. They are based on position in the toolbar. So if you want to quickly implement the first icon on the left, you type ALT-1. Once you get past 9 it turns into a 2-digit number (not the number you might expect, but no matter). So it makes sense to put your favorite items on the left side where they can be accessed with 2 keystrokes.
Unfortunately, many of the available icons in Excel now bring up sub-menus (for things like selecting colors, formatting fonts, etc.). There doesn't seem to be any way to traverse the sub-menus with keyboard shortcuts, so there is no point putting these icons on the left side of the bar. This has caused me to rethink my usual preferred ordering on the toolbar. However, I think I have arrived at a system that actually works better in many ways than what I had before. For instance, one thing that I frequently find myself doing is turning auto-filtering on and off. In Excel 1997/2003 the toolbar icon for that was slightly broken - it would turn the feature on, but not off. That bug has been fixed, so the autofilter icon is more useful now. I put it towards the left side of the little toolbar, which allows me to toggle auto-filter by typing ALT-3. This definitely beats mousing to Data ->Autofilter->Off ever time I want to do that.
Now that I have the Ribbon Minimized and the toolbar positioned and configured the way I want it, the new Excel looks a lot like the old one. I don't like being restricted to a single toolbar, but it has prompted me to make more use of existing keyboard shortcuts, which is always more efficient than mousing. So I think I'll be okay with this thing after all. It only took me 4 hours to figure it out and customize Word and Excel. But it all seems so unnecessary. What was wrong with Office 2003? (Well, okay, the autofilter button needed fixing. But I'm sure they could have found a less disruptive way to do that.)
Unfortunately, many of the available icons in Excel now bring up sub-menus (for things like selecting colors, formatting fonts, etc.). There doesn't seem to be any way to traverse the sub-menus with keyboard shortcuts, so there is no point putting these icons on the left side of the bar. This has caused me to rethink my usual preferred ordering on the toolbar. However, I think I have arrived at a system that actually works better in many ways than what I had before. For instance, one thing that I frequently find myself doing is turning auto-filtering on and off. In Excel 1997/2003 the toolbar icon for that was slightly broken - it would turn the feature on, but not off. That bug has been fixed, so the autofilter icon is more useful now. I put it towards the left side of the little toolbar, which allows me to toggle auto-filter by typing ALT-3. This definitely beats mousing to Data ->Autofilter->Off ever time I want to do that.
Now that I have the Ribbon Minimized and the toolbar positioned and configured the way I want it, the new Excel looks a lot like the old one. I don't like being restricted to a single toolbar, but it has prompted me to make more use of existing keyboard shortcuts, which is always more efficient than mousing. So I think I'll be okay with this thing after all. It only took me 4 hours to figure it out and customize Word and Excel. But it all seems so unnecessary. What was wrong with Office 2003? (Well, okay, the autofilter button needed fixing. But I'm sure they could have found a less disruptive way to do that.)
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no subject
Date: 2009-02-05 06:50 pm (UTC)