The formula bar

shows us the content of the active cell, that is to say, the square were we are. When we are about to modify the content of a cell, the bar will change slightly, but this is something we are going to go into later.

The labels bar

allows us to move within the different sheets of a workbook.

The scrolling bars

allow us to move lengthways and widthways in the sheet in a fast and simple way. Just move the bar dragging it with the mouse, or click on the triangles.

The Getting Started pane

This element is an improvement of Excel previous version.

The getting started pane is sensitive to context, this means that it will display information according to what we may be doing at the time we open it.

For example, in the image on the right, you can see the getting startd panel that appears when we start Excel. It offers the most useful commands for the situation: it shows which sheets have been recently opened; it allows us to create a new sheet from a template; it also offers a large amount of help in line, etc.

If we are inserting a picture, the getting started pane will be different and will display the most useful options to work with pictures.

There are other getting started panels available, for example: Clipboard, Search, Insert predesigned picture, New Book . To have access to them go to the triangle next to the pane title and a list of available panels will drop down.

Any time we want, we can open or close the getting started panel from the menu View, option Task Pane.

Window's task bar contains the button Start, where you can find icons to start some programs, like Internet Explorer, etc., and it also contains one button for each Excel2003 document open, so you can go from one document to another clicking on these icons (according to our version of Windows we may have different icons or only one with an unfolding list of all Excel documents open). This bar does not belong to Excel2003 but to Windows, as its name indicates.

Help

There are different methods of obtaining Help with Excel.

For one of these methods we use the menu bar, clicking on the question mark we can use the following opitons: 

-Microsoft Excel Help, will display a screen where we will see an index. We can search by words in the Content or with the Assistant for help which allows us to ask questions using normal language

- Show the Office assitant, is a chart with animation that will help us when it detects that we need help. For example, if it detects that we are going to create a worksheet, it will offer help for that, etc.

- Microsoft Office Online, this is one of Excel2003 new features. It opens in the task panel a help search dialoge on line with Microsoft.

Another method is the use of key F1 of the keyboard or the button of the Toolbar. When we use either of these methods, a help window will be displayed on the right of the window. We will find there the necessary help.

We can also use the option in the Menu Bar.

To use this method, click in the box, write your question and press the key ENTER in the keyboard. Different links with the help possibilities found will be displayed

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