Excel Optimize

After you enter your data into a worksheet, you can change the data appearance, summarize it, or sort it by using the commands on the user interface Ribbon. Unlike in previous versions of Excel, which made you hunt through a complex toolbar and menu system to find the commands you wanted, you can find everything you need at the top of the Excel 2007 program window.

The Excel 2007 user interface divides its commands into seven tabs: Home, Insert, Page Layout, Formulas, Data, Review, and View. The Home tab appears when you start Excel 2007.

If you work with macros or add-ins, you can add the Developer tab to the user interface. For more information about adding the Developer tab.

The Home tab contains a series of groups: Clipboard, Font, Alignment, Number, Styles, Cells, and Editing. Each group, in turn, hosts a series of controls that enable you to perform tasks related to that group (formatting fonts, setting cell alignment, creating number formats, and so on). Clicking a control with a drop-down arrow displays a menu that contains further options; if an option has an ellipsis (…) after the item name, clicking the item displays a dialog box. If a group has a dialog box associated with it, such as the Number group shown in the preceding graphic, you can display that dialog box by clicking the Dialog Box Launcher at the lower-right corner of the group. (The Dialog Box Launcher looks like a small box with an arrow pointing down and to the right.)