Not new in Excel 2010

What has not changed in Excel 2010 is the extension of the files. The “.xlsx” extension initiated in the 2007 version remains the same in Excel 2010. However, if you apply certain new functions in an Excel 2010 file which were not supported in Excel 2007, these will obviously not be displayed in Excel 2007.

The “File” button

What has been changed, or rather disappeared, is the “Office Button” (1). This button, introduced in Excel 2007, is already gone. The Office button has been replaced with the “File” button (2). Clicking this button takes you to the “Backstage” view.

“Backstage” display (1)

The “Backstage” view is divided into three parts. In the left part (1), we find four buttons at the top with the most common commands in Excel. I suppose everyone knows what they do, but I do want to mention the keyboard shortcuts for these commands.

1. “Save” = Ctrl + S
2. “Save as” = F12 (Shift+Ctrl+S for Mac)
3. “Open” = Ctrl + O
4. “Close” = Ctrl + W

In the left bottom part, we have a number of tabs. “Info”, “Recent”, “New”, “Print”, “Save and Send” and “Help” buttons plus “Options” and “Exit”. Each tab has a number of options.

The “Info” tab will be selected, when we click the “File” button when an Excel file is open(ed). This tab gives us the information about the opened file.

In the middle column we find the commands, “Permissions”, “Prepare for Sharing” and “Versions”. With the “Permissions” button, we can protect a workbook in whole or in part. With “Prepare for Sharing”, we check the file access and interoperability for the file that we are going to share with third parties. With the “Versions” button, we can restore unsaved versions of files, those files which we closed without saving them.

And in the right part (3) of the window, we have the properties of the opened file. You can add a title, tags and/or categories on which you can later perform a search in Windows 7.

The second tab is the “Recent” tab. Under the “recent” tab, we find a list of recently opened workbooks in the middle column (2) and a list of recently opened places (locations) (3) of these workbooks in the right column. The list of recently opened workbooks can contain up to 50 files.

By clicking on the “pushpins” (a) next to the file, you can attach the file to the list.

The file (a) will be moved to the top of the list, no matter how many files you have open. The file is pinned at the top of the list and will always appear. To disconnect this pinned file back from the list of sticky files, click again on the “pushpins” (a). To delete a file from the list of recent workbooks or from the list of pinned files, right click the file and choose the “Remove from list” option in the drop-down menu.

Note! When you delete a file from the list of recent workbooks, you do not remove it from your computer, just from this list.

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