Toolbutton

If you place the tip of the mouse pointer on one of the toolbuttons, a yellow ScreenTip box appears, describing the button s function. You can deactivate ScreenTips by choosing Toolbars from the View menu, then Customize... from... 

To create a text box, press the Text Box toolbutton El. The mouse pointer will change to a crosshair. Position the crosshair pointer where you want to place the text box, and click and drag to outline it (the text box can be moved and sized later). An empty text box will be displayed with a blinking text cursor. Type the desired text within the box. 

Text box input has many features of a simple word processor you can Cut, Copy or Paste text, make individual portions of text bold, italic or underlined, use different font styles, etc., as shown in Figure 1-7. The text within the box can be formatted with the Alignment toolbuttons or with the Alignment command. 

The default for toolbars is that the Standard and Formatting toolbars share one row. A button allows you to expand the toolbar to display the remaining toolbuttons. If you prefer to have "old style" toolbars, uncheck the Standard And Formatting Toolbars Share One Row box as well. 

Many menu commands can be carried out by using toolbuttons. Toolbuttons are more convenient they often combine a whole series of actions — menu selection plus dialog box options — into a single click of the mouse button. 

Use the Set Print Area toolbutton. In Chapter 19 you ll learn how to install the Set Print Area Toolbutton on a toolbar. 

You can also Copy or Cut text in the formula bar and Paste it in a worksheet cell. Select the text to be copied or cut, then press the Copy or Cut toolbutton or choose the appropriate command from the Edit menu. Complete the operation by clicking the Enter button in the formula bar. Then Paste in the desired cell. 

Excel Tip. You can use the Paste Values ( toolbutton instead of the Paste Special... menu command. See Chapter 19 for instructions on how to make this button, and many others, available. 

The Format Painter toolbutton copies and pastes formats from one cell or range to another cell or range. To use it, do the following ... 

Click the Format Painter toolbutton (this copies the format). 

You can also format number values in cells by using the number formatting toolbuttons shown following. 

Excel Tip. There isn t a toolbutton to format number values in exponential format. Apply exponential format conveniently by using the shortcut key sequence CONTROL+SHIFT+. See Appendix E for a complete list of shortcut... 

You can use the Chart Wizard toolbutton fl to create a chart. To use the Chart Wizard, first select the data to be plotted, e.g., a column of x values and a column of y values. The data can be in rows or columns. If the rows or columns... 

Excel Tip. You can also number-format chart axes by using numberformatting toolbuttons, such as Increase Decimal or Decrease Decimal... 

View menu, or click on the Project Explorer toolbutton... 

To change the name of the module from Modulel to a more descriptive one, choose Properties Window from the View menu, or click on the Properties Window toolbutton. In the Properties Window (Figure 13-4), highlight the name Modulel and type the new name. 

If you use a worksheet function within VBA that returns an array, the lower array index will be 1. Such worksheet functions include LI NEST, TRANSPOSE, MINVERSE, MMULT. Other functions that return arrays include the VBA function Caller when used with a menu command or toolbutton. 

The complete macro is shown in Figure 16-1. Right now you ll have to use the Macro Run dialog box to run the macro, which isn t very convenient. Of course you could assign a shortcut key to the macro, as described in Chapter 13. In Chapter 19 you ll learn how to create a custom toolbutton and assign the macro to it. 

In earlier versions of Microsoft Excel, menu bars contained only menus, and toolbars only toolbuttons. Beginning with Excel 97, toolbuttons and menu items are both members of the class of CommandBarButton objects. Command bars can contain buttons or menus or both. In general, however, mixing buttons and menu commands on the same toolbar doesn t seem to be a good idea, so this chapter deals exclusively with menus and Chapter 19 with toolbars. 

Some commands in the list of commands in the Commands tab have an icon beside them, others don t. Commands with an icon are toolbuttons, and those without an icon are menu commands. 

In this chapter you ll learn how to customize Excel s built-in toolbars and how to create new toolbuttons to simplify some of the operations that you perform often. 

Some of the toolbuttons on Excel s toolbars are not very useful for scientists. You can remove the toolbuttons you don t use, giving a less cluttered workspace and providing room for other, more useful toolbuttons. 

Removing seldom-used toolbuttons from a toolbar provides a less cluttered working environment and makes room for other, more useful tools. To delete a toolbutton from a toolbar or to add a built-in toolbutton to a toolbar, follow the procedures in the following boxes. 

Drag the toolbutton off the toolbar (when you click on it, the toolbutton outline is highlighted) and release the mouse button. The toolbutton will disappear. 

Select the desired toolbutton from the various categories (Figure 19-3). Drag the toolbutton to the desired place on the toolbar. Spaces between toolbuttons may be added or removed by using the procedure in the following box. 

The built-in Microsoft Excel toolbars can be restored to their "factory-installed" condition by using the Reset button in the Toolbars tab of the Toolbars dialog box (Figure 19-2). Individual toolbuttons can be restored by following the procedure described earlier. Custom toolbars cannot be reset. 

Toolbuttons can be organized into logical groups by grouping them together using separator bars. 

There are two ways to create a custom toolbar. One way is to modify an existing toolbar (such as the Standard toolbar). The other way is to create a new toolbar and then proceed to add built-in tools, as described earlier, or custom toolbuttons, as described later in this chapter. This way you can leave the Standard and Formatting toolbars (for example) unmodified and display your own custom toolbar. To create a new toolbar, use the procedure in the following box. 

Some of your macros will be written for a very specific purpose, such as to prepare a specialized report. The workbook containing the macro will be opened only when you want to assemble the report. Other macros automate tasks that you perform often, and you ll want to have them available whenever you re using Excel. These macros should be saved in the Personal Macro Workbook. To make a command macro even easier to use, you can add a custom toolbutton to a toolbar and assign the macro to it. The three macros described in this section — the NumberFormatConvert macro, the FullPage macro and the ChemicalFormat macro — are particularly convenient to use when they are assigned to a button. 

Figure 19-5. A custom toolbutton that can be placed on a toolbar.

The Macros category in the Commands tab (Figure 19-5) contains a custom toolbutton that can be assigned to a macro by following the procedure in the following box. 

Select the happyface" toolbutton (you ll create a new image for it later) and drag it to the desired location on the toolbar. 

Now right-click on the custom button to display the shortcut menu, and choose Assign Macro..., In the Assign Macro dialog box (Figure 19-6), select the name of the macro to be assigned to the toolbutton. Click the OK button. 

Excel Tip. When you place a custom toolbutton on a toolbar, you don t have to assign a macro to it right away. Later, if you click a custom toolbutton that doesn t have a macro assigned to it, the Assign to Tool dialog box will appear. 

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