Excel: Go Wide

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Problem: My ribbon looks different than my co-workers.

Strategy: Invest in a wide-screen monitor. The Excel experience dramatically improves at a 1440x900 or 1920x1080 resolution.

When you reduce the size of the Excel window, Excel automatically starts consolidating ribbon options into smaller icons and then groups. The next four figures show details of the Home tab of the ribbon at different sizes.

  1. At 1920 wide, five columns of the gallery are shown

  2. At a smaller screen, the cell styles gallery is a dropdown.

  3. Eventually, the entire Styles group becomes a dropdown..

  4. If the Excel window is too small, the Ribbon disappears.

    If you are the go-to person for solving Excel problems and you are helping a co-worker over the phone without using GoToMeeting, there will be some frustration as you tell them to look for the Bad, Good, Neutral tiles and they can only see a Styles dropdown.