Displaying tips when using Excel in presentations

- [Instructor] When you're using Excel during a presentation, perhaps in a small conference room with a large monitor or maybe in a larger room hooked up to a projection system, be thinking about the idea that you don't necessarily want to display everything all the time. There are two broad areas we want to focus on. One is the content of a worksheet or workbook itself, the other are the actual Excel elements like the menu and this formula bar and the sheet tabs at the bottom. Do we need to see those during a presentation? Let's first focus on the actual content itself.

As we're looking at this data on this worksheet here, does the audience really need to see the ID number and the phone number? You want to keep that data there but you don't necessarily want to display it. We can certainly drag across the column letters, right click and hide that information and depending upon the audience maybe those compensation numbers here, the salaries here in column J, or the job rating. Should that be visible? Well, ahead of time you'll decide and possibly hide those columns as well too. Now, when you hide columns, of course, you will see missing column letters.

Now, not everybody will see that but some people might raise a question about that. We'll show you a bit later we actually can hide the column letters. That's a possible option to not bring up that question. Similarly, we could if we wished, hide certain rows. Maybe some people have left the organization and we just want to keep the records there for a while but if we hide row nine by right clicking and hiding, there too someone possibly will see that. But, on the other hand most people probably wouldn't. So, there's some concern about the data.

And, of course, at different times depending upon the nature of the display you will want to make the display larger or smaller. The easy way to do that is with the Control key and the mouse wheel and it makes no difference where the mouse is pointing. We can zoom in, we can zoom out. That looks kind of jittery at times but to prevent that go to cell A1 and then when you use Control and the mouse wheel it looks a little bit steadier there as we zoom in and zoom out. You can do that at any time and it's the ideal tool for making more data visible as we zoom out or make the data that is visible larger and clearer.

That's a lot easier than using that slider bar in the lower right hand corner. Now, on a different worksheet like this one here sometimes the concern is you want to see more information on the screen, possibly make this information larger. Do you really need to see those ribbon menu icons? We can quickly hide them with Control F1. We're seeing a lot more rows now, and did we really need those icons during the presentation? Maybe not. So, it's easy to make them appear and disappear with Control F1.

If you want to go even further you can hide the entire ribbon menu system including the ribbon tabs and the quick access toolbar by pressing Control Shift F1. We're now seeing 32 rows. Back to normal, Control Shift F1 now we're seeing only 24 rows. Remember Control F1 hides the icons but not the ribbon tabs. That's Control F1 back and forth. Control Shift F1 is equivalent to a prior feature called Fullscreen.

There we are. Control Shift F1. Both of those are what we call toggle switches so we can move back and forth. Sometimes those are ideal for displaying more information and essentially hiding the features on the screen that don't really need to be seen much of the time. We can go a step further here and also hide the formula bar if we wish, the sheet tabs and the scroll bar at the bottom of the screen, we can even hide the column letters and row numbers. I don't think any of these are truly necessary but at certain times you might want to consider using them.

They're all found on the File tab of the ribbon under Options at the bottom. Choose Advanced and then as we scroll down here in four different areas. First of all under Display Show Formula Bar, let's not show it. Click OK. In the background you can see that we're seeing 24 rows. Now we're seeing 26 rows. We're not seeing the formula bar nor the name box to its left right now. Back to File. Options.

Advanced. We'll scroll down even farther here past Display into Display Options for this Workbook. Show Horizontal Scroll Bar, let's not show it. There's another choice here, Show Sheet Tabs. If you uncheck one of these but leave the other one checked it's not going to change the number of rows you're seeing on the screen. But if we uncheck both of them what we're about to hide at the bottom will be the sheet tabs and also the scroll bar to the right. So, probably you'd want to do both of these at the same time.

In other words, let's not show them. Click OK. We're seeing even more rows now. And if we don't want to see the column letters and row numbers it will allow us to see even more rows. So, back to File. Options. Advanced. And this time we scroll all the way down into Display Options for this Worksheet. Show Row and Column Headers, let's uncheck. Click OK. So, there we are. We've hidden many elements in Excel and if we don't want to see those icons remember it was Control F1.

So, we've got lots of capability here to display a lot of information and not necessarily be showing all the different elements of Excel that maybe we don't actually need during the presentation. So, after the presentation is over if you want to bring back that information, we can. Go to the File tab. Choose Options. And Advanced. And scroll down. None of these features can be resumed by using Undo. Can't undo these actions but we can certainly come back here and, again, under Advanced and then Display let's Show the Formula Bar and farther down here Show the Horizontal Scroll Bar Show the Sheet Tabs and Under Display Options for this Worksheet Show Row and Column Headers.

Click OK. And, once again, Control F1. So, lots of different techniques here for making the display of information during a presentation more compact and hiding that information that many times doesn't really need to be seen.