Part I: Getting Started with Excel
In previous versions of Excel, every workbook opened in a single Excel window. Beginning with Excel 2013, each
workbook opens in its own window. This change makes Excel work more like other Office applications and gives you
the opportunity to put different workbooks on different monitors more easily.
Each Excel window has five icons at the right side of its title bar. From left to right, they
are Account, Ribbon Display Options, Minimize, Maximize (or Restore Down), and Close.
An Excel window can be in one of the following states:
Maximized Fills the entire screen. To maximize a window, click its Maximize button.
Minimized Hidden but still open. To minimize a window, clicks its Minimize button.
Restored Visible but smaller than the whole screen. To restore a maximized window, click
its Restore Down button. To restore a minimized window, click its icon in the Windows
taskbar. A window in this state can be resized and moved.
To increase the amount of information you can see in the worksheet, click the Ribbon Display Options button and
choose Auto-Hide Ribbon. This maximizes the window and hides the Ribbon and status bar. In this mode, you can get
temporary access to the Ribbon commands by clicking the title bar. To return to the default Ribbon view, click the
Ribbon Display Options button and choose Show Tabs and Commands.
If you work with more than one workbook simultaneously (which is quite common), you
need to know how to move, resize, close, and switch among the workbook windows.
Moving and resizing windows
To move a window, click and drag its title bar with your mouse. If it’s maximized, it will
change to a restored state. If it’s already in a restored state, it will maintain its current
size.
To resize a window, click and drag any of its borders until it’s the size that you want it to
be. When you position the mouse pointer on a window’s border, the mouse pointer changes
to a double arrow, which lets you know that you can now click and drag to resize the win-
dow. To resize a window horizontally and vertically at the same time, click and drag any of
its corners.
If you want all of your workbook windows to be visible (that is, not obscured by another
window), you can move and resize the windows manually, or you can let Excel do it for
you. Choosing View ➪ Window ➪ Arrange All displays the Arrange Windows dialog box,
as shown in Figure 3.1. This dialog box has four window arrangement options. Just select
the one that you want and click OK. Windows that are minimized aren’t affected by this
command.
