Setting up custom views for quick access to different worksheet displays

- This worksheet shows a lot of budget detail. And frequently when I work with it, or make presentations with it, I don't want to show all this data. But I don't necessarily want to be showing people how to hide and un-hide columns and rows. I want quick access to different views of this worksheet. That can be referred to as a custom view, and there's a feature on the View tab called Custom Views. Let's say that often I want that look of just showing the quarters here. I'm going to drag across columns B, C and D, letting go with the left mouse button now and holding down the Control key.

And now using the left mouse button again to select columns F, G and H, and then J, K and L, N, O, P, right-click and Hide. And let's say that often when I'm showing this amount of detail I don't need to show the Expense detail, so I'll drag across rows 17 through 32, right-click and Hide. And I'll zoom in also here. There we are. So, I like this view. I want to be able to get to this quickly and easily at any time.

View tab, Custom Views, add a view. Now if I'm going to have three or four of these I want to be careful how I name them, so that it makes sense to me, and I might say "Quarters-no expense detail." And that should be sufficient. Click OK. At other times, I might want to show the months only. So, going back to the upper-left corner here, clicking these cells, double-clicking any column boundary, readjusting column A...

manually. Now I'm going to hide the quarters. Using the Control key each time. Right-click, Hide. Then I'll want to zoom back on this too so that we can see the entire year there. So that's another view that I want. So here I might call this "Months-no expense detail." Once again, on the View tab, Custom Views, Add, "Months-no expense detail." That's another view.

The full view I might need from time-to-time. So, once again, dragging across these columns here, double-clicking, off to the right there. Still have one hidden out here. Bring that one back too. And I do want to show the detail, let's say, for Expenses. So, dragging across rows 16 through 33, double-click that boundary. And of course, zooming back here. So we see all this on the screen. Somewhere in there. That might be good enough. We can barely see the last row but we can see it.

So, this is another view I want to hold onto. And so, this is another view I want to keep. I'll call this, by way of the View tab again, Custom Views, add another one called "Full View." So I think you get the idea here. I certainly have some others in mind too but, these can have spaces in them as well too, the naming. So, there are two different ways we can make the switch now. One a little bit longer. So, Custom Views. I see my choices there. I want to show the Months-no expense detail. I can either double-click it or click it once and click Show.

Double-clicking is a little bit faster. So I want to see the months and no expense detail. There it is. We see all the detail we need. Custom Views. Come back. Quarters-no expense. We see that one. We're seeing all of our detail that way too. We're back to the Full View. Now, another option initially seems a little bit more contrived, but allows us to have a drop box actually in the Quick Access toolbar. Quick Access toolbar is at the top of your screen. You might have added some other buttons.

A previous example I used a button here that I'm no longer using, but we can keep them there too. Right-click anywhere in the Quick Access toolbar and customize the Quick Access toolbar. And in this Excel Options dialog box you'll see lots of choices here. Down here you'll see even more. But if you click up top and then slide down, you'll see some other choices here including Drawing Tools, Format Tab, Picture Tools. Lots of other choices. Let me back out here for a moment.

Let's go back to were I was right-clicking on the Quick Access toolbar. Let's right-click any button in the Quick Access toolbar, customize the Quick Access toolbar, and you'll see lots of choices here down left-hand side. Also, a panel up above will say Popular Commands. You can choose Commands Not in the Ribbon. Even all commands if you wish. But Commands Not in the Ribbon should be sufficient. And as we scroll down this list, we will see an option here.

Custom Views. Click this. Add it to the Quick Access toolbar. There it is. Click OK. So, what does that say at the top of the screen? Full View. Here's a drop arrow. Quarters-no expense detail. There's that one. Here's the other one. Now, this stays here indefinitely. So slight downside is maybe you're not using this file for a while, you're still going to see that banner up there. I've got another workbook open. I'll switch to it with Control+Tab.

Here's the other workbook. That panel's still up there. It's not doing any harm, someone might ask why it's there. I have no choices here because there are no custom views in this workbook. So, at different times that might annoy you but on the other hand, it really isn't burden. It's just a question of how often would you use that feature and should it be there. And that's simply a judgement call. So let's say I work with this often. It's handy to have these views and I might have four or five others in addition to this on this same worksheet.

So at different times I can see the view. Here's the Full View. There it is. Notice how the Zoom factor is in effect at different times. In other words, right now I'm at 85%. The other one, when I set it up... This one was at 145%. So, that resizing that you might have done, and as I did, also travels with the custom view. So, it's a great feature for using in certain kinds of workbooks where you frequently need that switch without going through the mechanics of hiding and un-hiding as you typically do when you're trying to come up with these different views.