The title bar

contains the name of the document you are working on at a given time. When we create a new workbook it is asigned provisionally the name Book 1, until we save it and give it the name we desire. At the right hand side of the bar you will find the buttons minimize , restore and close .

The menu bar

contains those Excel operations gathered in dropdown menus. When you click Insert, for instance, you will see the operations related to the different elements that you can insert with Excel. You can do all operations from these menus. But those most frequently done you will do faster from the incons in other bars that we shall see shortly. On the right hand side are the work book buttons to minimize , restore and close .

Excel2003 menus bar have got intelligent behaviour. This consists basically in displaying only the most important commands in menus and those you have been using. To find out how you can change this behaviour, click here .

Dropdown menus in the bar contain three basic types of elements:

inmediate commands.

This are activated inmediately when you click on them.

You can identify them because the combination of keys to activate them from the keyboard, or nothing, will appear next to them.

For example, in the menu Insert, the command Hyperlink is activated by pressing simultaneously the keys Ctrl and K.

Another dropdown menu.

When you are on one of these, a new menu will open with more options next to it so you can choose any of them.

Dropdown menus are identified by a little triangle on their right.

For example, in the menu Insert, Picture.

Command with a window.

When you click, a window or a dialoge box will be displayed that will ask you to fill in some data . It will have the buttons to accept or to cancel.

These commands are identified by the dots that follow the comand's name.

For example, in the menu Insert, Chart...  

All the menus in the menus bar can be activated from the keyboard pressing Alt+underlined letter of the command name. For example Alt+i to dropdown the menu Insert.

The standar toolbar

contains icons to perform in an inmediate way some of the operations that are most frequent, like Save , Copy , Cut , etc.

The formatting toolbar

Contains the most common formatting operations, like change to bold, italics, choose type of font, etc.

There are operations that might not be available at a given time. They can be identified by a fainter colour. For example, if nothing has been selected, the icon Cut and the command Cut will appear in a lighter colour.

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