In Excel 2000-2003, if you open a menu and only see a third of the menu items, then you still have Adaptive Menus turned on. Learn why Microsoft included this half-baked feature and how you can turn it off in Episode 419.
This blog is the video podcast companion to the book, Learn Excel from MrExcel. Download a new two minute video every workday to learn one of the 277 tips from the book!
This blog is the video podcast companion to the book, Learn Excel from MrExcel. Download a new two minute video every workday to learn one of the 277 tips from the book!
Transcript of the video:
Hey, welcome back to the MrExcel netcast, I'm Bill Jelen.
Just a quick tip here today to make sure that you do not still have the adaptive menus turned on.
Back somewhere around Excel 2000, Excel 2002 Microsoft said, you know, our menu structure is far too confusing, people can never find anything and so in an effort to simplify it, we're going to randomly hide about two-thirds of the menu items, which was really an insane thing to do.
How can you ever try and learn Excel, if you can't see all of the menu items?
If you go to a menu items such as Tools and don't see the entire list, if you see this double drop down arrow at the bottom, then you have adaptive menus turned on.
Now it's very annoying, as you go to each menu, you only see four or five things.
And they're the four or five things you may have selected previously, but not the four or five things that are actually useful to you.
I think it's better to see the whole menu all the time.
So to correct that, we want to go not to Tools, Options, but to Tools, Customize… Tools Customize on the third tab, the Options tab, there's a couple of settings there that we want to turn on.
The first one is “Always show full menus”.
Don't want to see the adaptive menus, we want to see the full menu all the time.
The other one is “Show Standard and Formatting toolbars on two rows”, we’ll leave that unchecked for a second, you'll see that here my standard toolbar is greatly shortened and I have to click this button in order to see the rest of the icons.
Now once I use an icon, it gets added to the standard toolbar.
It's better just to go Tools, Customize and say that we want to see both of those toolbars on two rows.
That way you always see all the icons.
And again, now, if I go to the Tools menu, I see the entire menu from the start.
Rather than having to wait for the double drop down arrow or worse yet, not even realizing the double drop down arrow is there and there's more stuff hidden, just turn off adaptive menus using Tools, Customize.
Hey, thanks for stopping by, we'll see you next time for another netcast from MrExcel.
Just a quick tip here today to make sure that you do not still have the adaptive menus turned on.
Back somewhere around Excel 2000, Excel 2002 Microsoft said, you know, our menu structure is far too confusing, people can never find anything and so in an effort to simplify it, we're going to randomly hide about two-thirds of the menu items, which was really an insane thing to do.
How can you ever try and learn Excel, if you can't see all of the menu items?
If you go to a menu items such as Tools and don't see the entire list, if you see this double drop down arrow at the bottom, then you have adaptive menus turned on.
Now it's very annoying, as you go to each menu, you only see four or five things.
And they're the four or five things you may have selected previously, but not the four or five things that are actually useful to you.
I think it's better to see the whole menu all the time.
So to correct that, we want to go not to Tools, Options, but to Tools, Customize… Tools Customize on the third tab, the Options tab, there's a couple of settings there that we want to turn on.
The first one is “Always show full menus”.
Don't want to see the adaptive menus, we want to see the full menu all the time.
The other one is “Show Standard and Formatting toolbars on two rows”, we’ll leave that unchecked for a second, you'll see that here my standard toolbar is greatly shortened and I have to click this button in order to see the rest of the icons.
Now once I use an icon, it gets added to the standard toolbar.
It's better just to go Tools, Customize and say that we want to see both of those toolbars on two rows.
That way you always see all the icons.
And again, now, if I go to the Tools menu, I see the entire menu from the start.
Rather than having to wait for the double drop down arrow or worse yet, not even realizing the double drop down arrow is there and there's more stuff hidden, just turn off adaptive menus using Tools, Customize.
Hey, thanks for stopping by, we'll see you next time for another netcast from MrExcel.
