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About this lesson
Learn how to create and manage Custom Views in a worksheet.
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Exercise files
Download the ‘before’ and ‘after’ Excel workbooks from the video tutorial and try the lesson yourself.
Custom Views.xlsx22.6 KB Custom Views - Completed.xlsx
23 KB
Quick reference
Custom Views
Creating and managing Custom Views on a worksheet.
When to use
Custom views can be used to build a pre-packaged view of our spreadsheet, including hiding columns or rows. This can be very useful to build different looks to print out or show on screen.
Instructions
Creating Custom Views
- Expand the outlining to level 3
- Go to the View tab > Custom Views > Add
- Give this View the name of “Full” and click OK
- Collapse the outlining to level 2
- Go to the View tab > Custom Views > Add
- Give this View the name of “Compressed” and click OK
Using Custom Views
- Go to the View tab > Custom Views > Select the view you want > Click Show
- The view will be activated
Modifying Custom Views
- Show the Compressed view
- Click the – button to collapse line 11 (the Revenues section)
- Go to the View tab > Custom Views > Add
- Give this View the name of “Compressed” and click OK
- Click Yes when you are asked if you’d like to overwrite the view
- 00:04 In this video we're going to look at a cool technique called Custom Views,
- 00:08 which allows us to prepackage the way that we want to display our spreadsheet.
- 00:13 So we could go and hide certain rows and columns and give us multiple ways to very
- 00:17 quickly flip between the different views that we wanna show somebody.
- 00:21 Now, every custom view is actually set up through the View tab,
- 00:26 under the Custom Views button.
- 00:28 And while you normally wouldn't see views in this list if you haven't set them up,
- 00:32 this workbook happens to have three of them in it already and
- 00:35 I'd like to get rid of them.
- 00:36 Unfortunately, you can't select all of them at once,
- 00:38 we have to do it individually.
- 00:40 But if you need to delete a custom view, we're just gonna go and
- 00:42 click the Delete button and say Yes for each individual item.
- 00:46 And fortunately, there's only three, so it doesn't take that long.
- 00:50 Now, the next thing that I wanna focus on is creating a custom view.
- 00:54 The particular view of the spreadsheet that we're looking at right now
- 00:57 is where all rows are expanded.
- 00:59 We see all data.
- 01:00 And I'm gonna set up a custom view right now called Full
- 01:04 that will actually allow me to come back to this view at any point in time.
- 01:07 So there we are, it's gonna be Full.
- 01:09 You'll notice that we can actually change the print settings and include them or
- 01:12 not, as well as the hidden rows, the columns, and filter settings.
- 01:16 I'm now gonna say OK, and nothing really looks any different.
- 01:20 But now what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna ask you to create an alternate view of this.
- 01:24 So I think I'm gonna go and say, you know what, let's collapse this down to number 2
- 01:29 here, and then we'll collapse this down to number 1.
- 01:31 So at this point we now have a collapsed view of our income statement.
- 01:36 Perfect, this is the perfect candidate for another custom view.
- 01:40 We'll go to Custom Views and we'll set up a new one, call as Add and
- 01:45 we'll call this one Collapsed, and say OK.
- 01:51 We now have two views in the workbook and the reason why this is so
- 01:55 amazing is because I can easily go to custom views and
- 01:58 I can say, grab Full and Show and it opens it up.
- 02:03 Or Custom Views, Collapsed, and show and it'll toggle between them.
- 02:09 So as many different pieces as I do in here,
- 02:11 they're all gonna be captured in the view, but what if I wanna change the view?
- 02:15 Maybe, for example, I'm not really happy with seeing these headers up here.
- 02:20 So what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna go right-click and choose Hide.
- 02:26 And I'd like to replace my Collapsed view with this view.
- 02:30 No big deal.
- 02:31 We'll go to Custom Views, we'll go to collapsed, and we're gonna say Add.
- 02:36 And it says, okay, what's the name of the view that you want to work with?
- 02:39 I'm gonna type in the same name and say OK.
- 02:43 And it says, it already exist, do you wanna delete it?
- 02:45 Yes, and it will recreate the new view.
- 02:49 Let's go and check out Full, Show.
- 02:53 And say, yeah you know what,
- 02:54 I don't really wanna see these headers here either, so
- 02:56 we'll go right-click and say Hide.
- 02:59 Custom views, let's go and say Add, and we'll choose Full.
- 03:07 It already exists, we'll replace it.
- 03:10 Custom Views, we'll go look at the Collapsed view, and
- 03:12 you'll notice that we've updated it.
- 03:14 So those new headers don't show up now.
- 03:17 Now, they're still there, of course.
- 03:18 I can easily go back to the custom view for Full, Show it.
- 03:22 They don't show, but if I come back up here, right-click, and say, Unhide,
- 03:27 those rows, of course, will come back.
- 03:29 So Custom Views are a phenomenal way of being able to go and
- 03:33 prepackage the way you wanna show your data.
- 03:35 It doesn't protect any data, it doesn't really get rid of any data, but
- 03:38 it allows you to actually control what people are looking at.
- 03:41 So if you're in a board meeting and you need to look at different collections of
- 03:44 the way things are organized, no problem.
- 03:46 Custom Views, fantastic tool to make that happen.
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