Customizing toolbar

By default, Excel displays the standard and formatting toolbars. Excel has many other toolbars, which you can select with View => Toolbars. You can even make your own toolbar with View => Toolbars => Customize. An existing toolbar can be positioned anywhere on the spreadsheet simply by dragging the two vertical bars at its left edge (when it is docked in its standard place) or by its colored top (when not docked). 

To create animation effects, select slide show from the toolbar at the top of the page. On the pop-up menu select custom animation. Choose the effects tab. Select the custom animation of choice from the text box. 

Choose Toolbars from the View menu to display the submenu of available toolbars. The Standard and Formatting toolbars are the default toolbars, but you can display other toolbars by choosing them from the submenu. To learn more about customizing toolbars, see Chapter 19. 

If you place the tip of the mouse pointer on one of the toolbuttons, a yellow ScreenTip box appears, describing the button s function. You can deactivate ScreenTips by choosing Toolbars from the View menu, then Customize... from... 

Figure 1-9. The Options tab of the Customize dialog box allows you to specify how toolbars and menus are displayed.

Some buttons mentioned in this chapter don t appear on either the Standard or Formatting toolbar. To make them available for use, you can display other toolbars, or you can customize a toolbar (see Chapter 19). 

Here are some (but not all) of the ways to run a command macro from the Macro dialog box, as described in this chapter by means of a shortcut key, as described in this chapter by means of a custom menu command, as described in Chapter 18 by means of a custom button on a toolbar, as described in Chapter 19 by means of a button on a worksheet, as described in Chapter 8 as a subroutine called by another macro, as described in Chapter 15... 

You can modify existing menus or menu bars by using the Customize command in the Tools menu. Each version of Excel has used a different method to customize menus Excel 5/95 used the Menu Editor to modify menus. Excel 97 displayed a customizable copy of the menu bar in which to make changes, but in Excel 2000 menus are customized in exactly the same way as toolbars — by dragging the menu command to the desired place on the menu bar. 

The toolbar that contains the menu to be customized must be visible. 

Choose Customize... from the Tools menu, or choose Toolbars... from the View menu and choose Customize..., or right-click on any toolbar and choose Customize... from the shortcut menu. 

Excel Tip If you add a built-in menu to a toolbar and make changes to the menu, the changes will also appear in the built-in menu on the menu bar. Thus if you want a modified File menu on a custom menu bar, you should add a custom menu, rename it File, and then add the desired menu commands. 

In this chapter you ll learn how to customize Excel s built-in toolbars and how to create new toolbuttons to simplify some of the operations that you perform often. 

The built-in Microsoft Excel toolbars can be restored to their "factory-installed" condition by using the Reset button in the Toolbars tab of the Toolbars dialog box (Figure 19-2). Individual toolbuttons can be restored by following the procedure described earlier. Custom toolbars cannot be reset. 

There are two ways to create a custom toolbar. One way is to modify an existing toolbar (such as the Standard toolbar). The other way is to create a new toolbar and then proceed to add built-in tools, as described earlier, or custom toolbuttons, as described later in this chapter. This way you can leave the Standard and Formatting toolbars (for example) unmodified and display your own custom toolbar. To create a new toolbar, use the procedure in the following box. 

Press the New... button. Enter a name for the custom toolbar (see Figure 19-4), then press OK. The (empty) custom toolbar will appear. 

Figure 19-4. Naming a custom toolbar with the New Toolbars dialog box.

Some of your macros will be written for a very specific purpose, such as to prepare a specialized report. The workbook containing the macro will be opened only when you want to assemble the report. Other macros automate tasks that you perform often, and you ll want to have them available whenever you re using Excel. These macros should be saved in the Personal Macro Workbook. To make a command macro even easier to use, you can add a custom toolbutton to a toolbar and assign the macro to it. The three macros described in this section — the NumberFormatConvert macro, the FullPage macro and the ChemicalFormat macro — are particularly convenient to use when they are assigned to a button. 

Figure 19-5. A custom toolbutton that can be placed on a toolbar.

Excel Tip. When you place a custom toolbutton on a toolbar, you don t have to assign a macro to it right away. Later, if you click a custom toolbutton that doesn t have a macro assigned to it, the Assign to Tool dialog box will appear. 

Two custom toolbuttons, a FullPage(Portrait) toolbutton and a FullPage(Landscape) toolbutton, were created and positioned on the left side of the Standard toolbar. The FullPage macro was assigned to both buttons, as described earlier. 

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