You can make a lot of changes to Excel 2003 by making selections in the Options dialogue box. The first step is to open Excel, and choose Tools->Options from the menu bar. When you see the Options dialogue box, select the Colour tab.

 

 

Under the Colour tab, you can select a standard colour, a chart fill colour, or a chart line colour by clicking it with your mouse. You can then customize it by clicking the Modify button. When you click Modify a box will appear with a Custom tab.

 

 

Under the Custom tab, you can mouse drag the black triangle slider, or enter red, green, and blue colour components directly to customize this colour.

 

You can click the reset button under the colour tab to return to the default colours at any time.

 

 

 

 

 

Under the View tab in the Options box, you will see options to set up the appearance of the Excel 2003 screen.

 

 

Here you can specify the following:

·              Start up Task pane visible or not visible

·              Formula bar visible or not visible

·              Status bar visible or not visible

·              Windows in task bar ( will collapsed windows be visible in the task bar on your computer screen)

·              Comments (none) comments will not be displayed

·              Comment indicator only ( only the small triangle in the corner of a cell that indicates the presence of a comment will be visible)

·              Comment and indicator ( The comment and its indicator will be visible)

·              Objects (Show all) all drawing objects and inserted graphics are visible

·              Objects (Show place holders) charts and pictures will be shown as grey rectangles

·              Objects (Hide all) no objects i.e. charts, graphics, are displayed

·              Windows options (page breaks) hides or displays page breaks

·              Window options (formulas) hides or displays formulas in cells

·              Windows options (gridlines) hide gridlines

·              Windows options ( row and column headers) hide row numbers and column letters

·              Windows options (outline symbols) hides or displays outline symbols.

·              Windows options (Zero values) will zeros be shown or will cells with zeros be left blank

·              Windows options (Horizontal scroll bar) hides or shows the horizontal scroll bar

·              Windows options (Vertical scroll bar) hides or shows the vertical scroll bar

·              Windows options (sheet tabs) shows or hides the sheet name tabs

 

Under the Calculations tab, you can select Automatic calculation, or Manual calculation.

 

 

If you select Automatic, Excel will recalculate the worksheet automatically every time you change cell value. (This may take some time in a large workbook with a lot of formulas, especially array formulas).

 

If you select the Manual calculation option, Excel will only calculate the workbook values when you give a specific command (i.e. press F9). To re calculate the current worksheet, you could click the Calc sheet button.

 

 

Under the General tab, you will find:

 

·              An option to specify how many files to keep in the recently used file list on the File menu

·              An option to specify the starting number of worksheets in a new workbook (sheets in new workbook)

·              An option to specify a default location for Excel files to be opened from and saved to.

·              An option to specify the starting font type and font size for new workbooks (standard font)

·              An option to specify the username that will be associated with your workbooks

 

 

The following image shows the General options in the Options dialogue box.

 

 

 

Under the Edit tab, you will see a number of options that you can control with checkmarks.

 

Here you can specify the direction the cell selector will move to when you press enter.

 

You can choose to allow editing within a cell.

 

You can choose to allow cells to be dragged and dropped (careless dragging and dropping of cells can be a source of worksheet errors)

 

You can choose to enable or disable AutoComplete, and you can choose whether or not to show the paste and insert option buttons. (These buttons appear on the Excel screen after you paste data or insert rows or columns).

 

You can also specify a default number of decimal places for floating point numbers with the fixed decimal places option.

 

Under the spelling tab, you can specify a dictionary language to check spelling against, (you can choose from a selection of English, French, and Spanish dictionaries), and you can add items to the AutoCorrect list.

 

Under the custom list tab, you can add your own custom AutoFill lists, which will be the subject of the following discussion.