The Ribbon

You know the feeling. You visit your favourite supermarket (make that "most frequently used supermarket" as favourite suggests an element of pleasure!) to find they've moved everything round. Suddenly, your 5-minute shop is turning into something that will involve 25 minutes of trying to find the items on your list, and then 5 minutes actually putting them in your trolley. Users of earlier versions of Excel will have a very similar experience on the first few occasions that they use Excel 2007. They'll feel sure that the commands that they want to access are there - but where? In their attempt to make the various commands more accessible, and more visible, Microsoft have put them into groups, and assigned the groups to one of seven tabs. Some of the tab names - Formulas and View are good examples - give a fairly clear indication of the sort of commands that they host, but others are less helpful. The Home tab features commands that are used most often (according to Microsoft) and so here you'll find a diverse mix of items which include copy/paste, formatting and sorting/filtering. There are also a number of commands - Open, Save, Close, Exit and Print - to name but five, which are accessed not via a tab but via the Microsoft Office Button in the top left hand corner of the screen. To some extent this replaces the File menu in earlier versions.
Unfortunately, you can't (unless you resort to programming) customize the ribbon. What you see is what you're stuck with. It's not all bad news though. There's a "Quick Access Toolbar" (QAT) just next to the Microsoft Office Button - and this can be customized so that it contains the commands you use most frequently. To add any command, from any tab, to the QAT, just right-click on the command, and select "Add to the Quick Access Toolbar". There's also quite a lot of help for new users on the Microsoft Office website at www.office.microsoft.com. Look for How-to tips and training then How-to resources then Get started with the 2007 programs. There's a useful interactive guide which you can download. Using this, click on a menu item in Excel 2003 and the guide shows you where to find the equivalent in Excel 2007. For a more permanent resource, download the Excel Ribbon Mapping Workbook which comes in the form of an Excel template file.