Experienced Excel users are very actively using the ability of Microsoft Excel to customize the interface “for themselves” – they add new buttons to it, remove unnecessary ones, create entire panels or tabs with their author’s toolkits. But there is one problem. When switching to another computer or after reinstalling Windows / Office, all these manual settings are often lost and you have to set everything up again. Let’s see how you can play it safe and save them for the future – for recovery or transfer to another PC.
Excel 2003 and older
In older versions, the interface was configured through the menu command Service – Setup (Tools — Customize). Using this dialog box, you can:
- create additional toolbars, filling them with the buttons you personally need – tab Toolbars – button Create (Toolbars — New)
- add missing and remove unnecessary buttons – drag and drop from the tab Commands directly to the panel and back
In fact, Excel 2003 stores the configuration of toolbars in a special file, updating the data in it after each session of working with Excel. The file is located (most likely) at C:Documents and SettingsимяApplication DataMicrosoftExcel and is called:
- Excel10.xlb – for Excel 2002 version
- Excel11.xlb – for Excel 2003 version
You can easily copy this file to another computer (with the same version of Excel) or make a backup copy of this file in case you need to reinstall Microsoft Office.
Excel 2007
In this version, Excel, unfortunately, did not allow the user to customize the ribbon – buttons could only be added and removed on the Quick Access Toolbar in the upper left corner of the screen. The settings of this panel are saved in a file Excel.qatlocated in the folder C:Documents and SettingsимяLocal SettingsApplication DataMicrosoftOffice
Excel 2010 and later
In this version, everything is done as conveniently as possible. You can customize everything – both the ribbon and the Quick Access Toolbar. At the same time, all these non-standard settings can simply be exported to a small text file, from where they can then be easily restored by import. To do this, select File – Options – Ribbon Setup – Import-Export (File — Options — Customize Ribbon — Import-Export):
