Computerworld - Have you come to Microsoft Excel 2010 by way of Excel 2007, or did you skip directly from Excel 2003 or an earlier version? Those in the former group are likely to have a very different upgrade experience from those in the latter group.
If you're in the former group, you'll find a few small interface tweaks and a handful of useful new features in Excel 2010. If you're in the latter group, you'll find an overhauled interface that radically changes how you interact with common features and functions.
Either way, we've got you covered. This cheat sheet shows newcomers to the interface how to get around; it also explores features that are brand-new in Excel 2010. We've noted which sections of the story former Excel 2007 users can skip over.
Don't miss our other Office 2010 cheat sheets: We've covered Word 2010 and Outlook 2010 and will be covering PowerPoint 2010 in the coming months.
Get acclimated to the new Excel
To help you find your way around Excel 2010, here's a quick guided tour of the revamped interface; follow along using the screenshot below.
The Quick Access toolbar. Introduced in Excel 2007, this mini-toolbar offers buttons for the most commonly used commands, and you can customize it with whatever buttons you like.
The File tab/Backstage. The File tab in Excel 2010 replaces the Office orb button in Excel 2007, which replaced the old File menu found in earlier versions of Excel. Click it, and it leads you to Backstage, a new command center where you can handle an array of tasks, including opening, printing and sharing files; customization; version control and more. As you'll see later in this story, Backstage represents the biggest change in Excel 2010.
The Ribbon. Love it or hate it, the Ribbon is the main way you'll work with Excel. Instead of old-style menus, submenus, sub-submenus and so on, the Ribbon groups small icons for common tasks together in tabs on a big, well, ribbon. So, for example, when you click the Insert tab, the Ribbon appears with buttons for items that you can insert into a spreadsheet, such as charts, tables, PivotTables, clip art or a hyperlink.
The Excel 2010 Ribbon looks and works much the same as the Excel 2007 Ribbon, with one nifty addition: In Excel 2010, you can customize what's on the Ribbon.
The Scrollbar. This is largely unchanged from previous versions of Excel; use it to scroll up and down. At the top, there's a double arrow that, when clicked upon, expands the area at the top of the worksheet that displays the contents of the current cell. Just below the double arrow is a tiny button that looks like a minus sign that lets you split your screen in two.
The View toolbar. As with Excel 2007, there is a View toolbar at the bottom right of the screen that lets you choose between Normal, Page Layout and Page Break Preview -- the latter view shows you how your spreadsheet will look when it prints. There's also a slider that lets you zoom in or out of your document.
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