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valuable time.

       This icon denotes a tidbit that you ought to pay extra attention to; otherwise, you’ll be sorry. I reserve this icon for those times when you can lose data and otherwise screw up your spreadsheet.

       This icon denotes a tidbit only for Excel users who are running Excel 2016 on some sort of touchscreen device such as a Windows tablet.

       This icon denotes a tidbit that makes free use of (oh no!) technical jargon. You may want to skip these sections (or, at least, read them when no one else is around).

      Where to Go from Here

      The question of where to go from here couldn’t be simpler, go to Chapter 1 and find out what you’re dealing with. Which book you go to after that is a matter of personal interest and need. Just go for the gold and don’t forget to have some fun while you’re digging!

       Occasionally, Wiley’s technology books are updated. If this book has technical updates, they’ll be posted at www.dummies.com/go/excel2016aioupdates.

      Book I

      Excel Basics

       Visit www.dummies.com for great Dummies content online.

Chapter 1

      The Excel 2016 User Experience

       In This Chapter

      ▶ Getting to know Excel 2016’s Start screen and program window

      ▶ Selecting commands from the Ribbon

      ▶ Unpinning the Ribbon

      ▶ Using Excel 2016 on a touchscreen device

      ▶ Getting around the worksheet and workbook

      ▶ Using Excel 2016’s new Tell Me feature when you need help

      ▶ Launching and quitting Excel

      Excel 2016 relies primarily on the onscreen element called the Ribbon, which is the means by which you select the vast majority of Excel commands. In addition, Excel 2016 sports a single toolbar (the Quick Access toolbar), some context-sensitive buttons and command bars in the form of the Quick Analysis tool and mini-bar, along with a number of task panes (such as Clipboard, Research, Thesaurus, and Selection to name a few).

      Among the features supported when selecting certain style and formatting commands is the Live Preview, which shows you how your actual worksheet data will appear in a particular font, table formatting, and so on before you actually apply it. Excel also supports an honest-to-goodness Page Layout view that displays rulers and margins along with headers and footers for every worksheet. Page Layout view has a zoom slider at the bottom of the screen that enables you to zoom in and out on the spreadsheet data instantly. The Backstage view attached to the File tab on the Excel Ribbon enables you to get at-a-glance information about your spreadsheet files as well as save, share, preview, and print them. Last but not least, Excel 2016 is full of pop-up galleries that make spreadsheet formatting and charting a real breeze, especially with the program’s Live Preview.

      Excel 2016’s Sleek Look and Feel

      If you’re coming to Excel 2016 from Excel 2007 or Excel 2010, the first thing you notice about the Excel 2016 user interface is its comparatively flat (as though you’ve gone from 3-D to 2-D) and decidedly less colorful display. Gone entirely are the contoured command buttons and color-filled Ribbon and pull-down menu graphics along with any hint of the gradients and shading so prevalent in the earlier versions. The Excel 2016 screen is so stark that even its worksheet column and row borders lack any color, and the shading is reserved for only the columns and rows that are currently selected in the worksheet itself.

      The look and feel for Excel 2016 (indeed, all the Office 2016 apps) is all part of the Windows 10 user experience. This latest version of the Windows operating system was developed primarily to work across a wide variety of devices from desktop and laptop to tablets and smartphones, devices with much smaller screen sizes and where touch often is the means of selecting and manipulating screen objects. With an eye toward making this touch experience as satisfying as possible on all these devices, Microsoft redesigned the interface of both its new operating system and Office 2016 application programs: It attempted to reduce the graphical complexity of many screen elements as well as make them as responsive as possible on touchscreen devices.

      The result is a snappy Excel 2016, regardless of what kind of hardware you run it on. And the new, somewhat plainer and definitely flatter look, while adding to Excel 2016’s robustness on any device, takes nothing away from the program’s functionality.

       The greatest thing about the look of Office 2016 is that each of its application programs features a different predominant color. Excel 2016 features a green color long associated with the program. Green appears throughout the program’s colored screen elements, including the Excel program and file icon, the status bar, the outline of the cell pointer, the shading of highlighted and selected Ribbon tabs, and menu items. This is in stark contrast to the last few versions of Excel where the screen elements were all predominately blue, the color traditionally associated with Microsoft Word.

      Excel’s Start Screen

When you first launch Excel 2016, the program opens up an Excel Start screen similar to the one shown in Figure 1-1. This screen is divided into two panes. The left pane lists recently opened workbooks and contains an Open Other Workbooks link. The right pane contains a Search for Online Templates text box with links to suggested searches (Business, Personal, Industry, and so on) followed by your user account name, e-mail, and photo, if you use one. Below you see thumbnails of various different templates that you can use in opening a new Excel workbook file.

       Figure 1-1: The Excel 2016 program window as it appears immediately after launching the program.

      The first template thumbnail displayed here is called Blank Workbook, and you select this thumbnail to start a new spreadsheet of your own design. The second thumbnail is called Take a Tour, and you select this thumbnail to open a workbook with five worksheets that enable you to play around with several of the nifty new features in Excel 2016.

       I encourage you to take the time to open the Take a Tour template and explore its worksheets. When you click this thumbnail, Excel opens a new Welcome to Excel workbook where you can experiment with using the Flash Fill feature to fill in a series of data entries; the Quick Analysis tool to preview the formatting, charts, totals, pivot tables, and sparklines you can add to a table of data; and the Recommended Charts command to create a new chart, all with a minimum of effort. After you’re done experimenting with these features, you can close the workbook by choosing File ⇒ Close or pressing Ctrl+W and then clicking the Don’t Save button in the alert dialog box that asks you whether you want to save your changes.

      Following the Blank Workbook and Take a Tour template thumbnails, you find all sorts of standard templates that you can select to use as the basis for new worksheets. These templates run the gamut from invoicing spreadsheets to a sales call log and organizer. (See Book II, Chapter 1 for more on creating new workbooks from ready-made and custom templates.)

      Excel’s Ribbon User Interface

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