Introduction

Microsoft Office Excel 2003 offers many tools that help you make the best use of your time. You can customize several settings in the Excel work environment to suit the way you like to work. You can make general changes that affect every workbook, or specific editing options.

You can increase your efficiency by customizing the look of the Excel window, the way you execute commands, and the way you create and arrange worksheets in a window. You can maximize your view of the work area, so you spend less time scrolling through a sheet or switching from sheet to sheet, and more time working with data.

Creating your own custom toolbar, or enhance the one you use most often, can save you both time and workspace. You can create your own menu with a list arrow and add all your favorite commands. You can also use speech recognition that lets Excel respond to voice commands.

Have you ever wondered how those automated phone messages work? Well, with the playback tool in Excel, you can have Excel speak the value of cell contents. You can initiate commands with your voice and have them performed in Excel. This is very helpful when you want to dictate text or numbers directly into your workbook. Using multiple languages can assist you in translation areas of a workbook that you might be sharing with others. You can also have Excel translate your handwriting into text or numbers . When problems arise, and they usually do, Excel has a repairing and recovery feature to try and get your lost workbooks.