Controlling Your Start Experience

Quick reference

• 00:04 Let's talk a little bit about your Excel startup experience.
• 00:08 By default,
• 00:09 when you open Excel you'll be taken into a screen that looks similar to this.
• 00:13 And I say similar because this does seem to be one of those areas that Microsoft is
• 00:17 constantly trying to tweak to make it touch friendly for devices,
• 00:21 a little bit easier to work through, and things like that.
• 00:24 So what it looks like may change.
• 00:27 But the key thing is that we've got a Home tab right off the top here,
• 00:30 and it's got a big New blank workbook button.
• 00:33 If we can expand this though, and we can see Blank Workbook,
• 00:36 if your organization has created any templates of their own, like we have,
• 00:40 you'll notice that we actually have those listed here.
• 00:43 In addition, Microsoft will also suggest some of their own created templates here,
• 00:47 which may or may not line up with what you see here,
• 00:50 depending on what they're deploying as you're working with Excel.
• 00:53 I'm going to collapse this back down so
• 00:55 that we have our big New blank workbook button.
• 00:58 You'll notice there's a Search to look for different files.
• 01:00 There's also a Recommended for You section.
• 01:03 And under this section here, if you expand it, now I'm going to blur out all my files
• 01:07 of course, but this uses some algorithms that Microsoft has to try and
• 01:10 figure out which files are the most important to you.
• 01:13 And it will serve those up as kind of a quick hit to get directly into what you
• 01:17 want to start working on again.
• 01:19 Let me collapse that down.
• 01:21 The next thing you'll see is that you've got a Recent list that shows you the most
• 01:24 recently listed files that you've actually worked on.
• 01:27 We have a pinned selection.
• 01:29 And if you actually mouse over an individual file,
• 01:32 you can actually find a pin icon where you can pin it to this particular list.
• 01:36 And you also have a section for files that are shared with you, so that if somebody
• 01:40 actually shares them using the different sharing features in Office,
• 01:44 they'll show up on this list.
• 01:46 We also have on the left hand side a New button.
• 01:49 This one here is focused on creating your blank workbooks or
• 01:52 your personal organization's templates, or a massive gallery of templates
• 01:56 from Microsoft that they think that you might find useful.
• 01:59 Finally we have an Open section here, which lists our different drives and
• 02:04 locations down the left hand side, as well as our workbooks or
• 02:08 folders that we might actually want to dig into or reopen as well.
• 02:12 Now this is great and everything else, but I actually find this really intrusive.
• 02:16 Because, when I open Excel, I want it to open directly into a blank spreadsheet.
• 02:21 I don't want to have to be slowed down by something where I gotta click to open
• 02:24 another file.
• 02:25 I can always go File > Open, if I'm in a blank workbook.
• 02:28 So here's what I'm going to do.
• 02:30 I'm going to control this by going down to Options on the left hand side.
• 02:35 This will open up the Excel Options screen for me,
• 02:38 which you can actually find under File > Options.
• 02:42 I'll show you that in a little bit.
• 02:44 If I take a look at the general tab and I scroll all the way to the bottom,
• 02:48 what I'm going to do is I'm going to uncheck this box to show the start
• 02:51 screen when the application starts.
• 02:53 And what's going to happen now is I'm going to click OK, and
• 02:57 I'm going to restart Excel.
• 03:00 And once Excel is restarted, it opens directly into a blank workbook, and
• 03:04 that's perfect.
• 03:05 If I need to go and open another workbook, I can always go to the File screen,
• 03:10 which will take me back to these similar screens that you saw before, with Home,
• 03:15 New, and Open.
• 03:16 In addition, you'll notice all the way down the bottom we've got Options,
• 03:20 if we do really want that piece, that nice start screen, you can always come back and
• 03:24 actually check the box, and say OK.
• 03:26 And at that point when you restart Excel you'll be taken back into
• 03:29 that start screen.
• 03:30 Personally for me though I am much more of a fan of opening Excel and
• 03:34 coming directly into a workbook, because I create new stuff all the time,
• 03:39 and I don't want to be slowed down by having to click just one extra button.

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