Outlining

Quick reference

• 00:03 When we're working with Excel there are occasions where with our documents we actually want to compress certain sections to
• 00:10 get them out of the way so we can focus maybe on higher level or drill into more detail on
• 00:14 occasion when it's needed but obscure it when it's not.
• 00:17 To that end we've got Outlining Tools, that's what they're for. So let's take a look at how they work.
• 00:22 Right now we've got a bit of an income statement here it's got a Revenue section, Costs,
• 00:26 we've got Salaries. We've got a Supplies section down here
• 00:30 and Other Costs as well with a Net Profit or Loss.
• 00:34 But there's probably a little bit more detail than we need to see all the time here so let's see if we can use
• 00:38 Outlining to compress certain pieces and get them out of the way when we don't need them.
• 00:43 The way we do that is we're gonna go and we'll highlight Revenues all the way down to the line just above
• 00:48 the Gross Revenue line and we go to Data and then we go to Group.
• 00:53 And when we Group it you'll see that we get a little line down the side with the minus button right beside gross revenue. So we always
• 01:00 highlight the grouping to the row just above where we want to compress to.
• 01:05 What that does when we click on this minus is it'll actually shrink all the information out of the way just showing us
• 01:11 our Gross Revenue or total line. You can see if we go from row 5 to 11 it hides them and by
• 01:16 clicking a plus we can bring them back. It's kind of a neat little tool.
• 01:21 Let's do the same thing with our costs we can go and pull from Salaries, to just above the Salaries there and we'll Group that.
• 01:29 And then we'll scroll down a little bit more here and we'll take this blank line all the way down to Supplies
• 01:38 and we'll scroll down a little more and we'll grab our Other Costs, we'll take that just above Other Costs.
• 01:45 Group that.
• 01:46 And because we can why don't we Group from Other Costs all the way back up
• 01:54 to our Costs line here as well and Group that one too.
• 01:57 So what this does is it actually creates nested grouping levels.
• 02:03 What ends up happening here when we go and compress this down,
• 02:08 Let's go and actually press 1 so we compress all the way down to the very top level and you can see that we've got Gross
• 02:13 Revenues and we've got Total Costs and we've got Net Profit.
• 02:17 We've got a little stray underline at the top that we probably don't need though.
• 02:23 Let's see if we expand 2 it'll expand the Revenues plus the
• 02:27 Cost lines and we definitely have some underlines in here that are in kind of a weird place.
• 02:31 Three it expands everything. So what's going on with these underlines then?
• 02:37 You notice there's an underlying or an overlying rather on the 86,000 gross revenues. When I go and compress that down that line goes away.
• 02:47 With salaries we've got a line on top and bottom when I compress that the top line has gone away but the bottom one hasn't.
• 02:55 Why would that be?
• 02:57 What happens when I compress supplies?
• 03:00 Neither line goes away, what's going on?
• 03:03 Well what's actually happening here is that when we look at a cell we apply lines to the top and bottom.
• 03:11 But what you would think is that this line is between the cell but that is actually not true. It's actually on the top or bottom of the cell and
• 03:19 what you actually see is when these lines are compressed, when I compress row 26,
• 03:25 row 26 is still visible so the lines at the top of row 26 and the line that is on the bottom of row 26 are still visible.
• 03:33 If I expand that again, if that line were on the bottom of row 25
• 03:38 it would actually disappear because row 25 gets hidden. So let's try that. We're going to go and highlight these
• 03:43 and we'll Format Cells. The easiest way to deal with this is to remove all the borders
• 03:48 and then to come back and say alright let's go with the cell above.
• 03:52 Back to the Home tab and give it a bottom border.
• 03:55 And the cell below we'll go and give that one a top border and now when we compress this
• 04:03 you can see that those lines go away. This one still stays the bottom border but that's because row 27 is still visible.
• 04:11 What happens if I compress this section?
• 04:15 That looks much better doesn't it? We've got a subtotal on here for Other Costs. The line is
• 04:19 showing when we've got those ones. What happens when we compress that one down?
• 04:24 The line just above the 81,608 is still showing.
• 04:31 So really then what I want is when I compress these lines here and get rid of them, I really want this line to go away. So this particular
• 04:39 section here, the line between 33 and 34 really needs to be on the bottom of row 33 so I can hide it. So let's set that up as well.
• 04:47 So we'll get rid of the border in the middle
• 04:51 we'll go and we'll set that on the bottom of cell B33
• 04:55 and now when I compress
• 05:02 rows 13 to 33
• 05:05 that will also go away and we're good to go.

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