Gallery of Spiffy Examples

This section includes a few samples of what you can do in Office Excel 2007. With the exception of a couple of scanned personal photos, we created all the effects represented here with the tools and clip art that come with Excel.

Figure 10-50 shows a logo for a fictitious company called Fabrikam, Inc. We created the logo using the following tools:

• Insert tab, SmartArt, Stacked Venn diagram

• Insert tab, WordArt button

• Home tab, Font controls

Figure 10-50: This logo shows a different use for a diagram.

On the CD You'll find the  Graphics Gallery.xlsx file in the Sample Files section of the companion CD.

We created the Pacific Musical Instruments logo shown in Figure 10-51 on a page with a picture applied to the background by clicking the Background button on the Page Layout tab. We imported the speaker and musical note graphics from another program. Otherwise, we used the following tools to create the logo:

• Insert tab, Text Box button

• Format tab under Drawing Tools, Rotate, Flip Horizontal

• Home tab, Merge & Center button (the block of cells below the logo that is formatted with a gradient fill)

Figure 10-51: You can do a lot with text boxes.

Figure 10-52 shows a picture applied to the background using the Background button on the Page Layout tab and the following tools:

• Insert tab, Shapes, Callouts, Rounded Rectangular Callout

• Format tab under Drawing Tools, Shape Styles, Subtle Effect, Accent 4

Figure 10-52: This shows how you can use a background picture and some cartoon callouts.

The Adventure Works worksheet in Figure 10-53 has an interesting argyle background created by first selecting A1:E4 and then enlarging the cells by changing the row heights and column widths. With the cell range still selected, we then clicked the Dialog Box Launcher in the Font group on the Home tab and then, on the Border tab, clicked both diagonal border preset buttons. Then we clicked the Fill tab and selected a fill color. We did the rest of the work with the following tools:

• Insert tab, Clip Art button

• Insert tab, Shapes, Rectangle

• Insert tab, WordArt button

• Format tab under Drawing Tools, Text Effects button, Shadow, Outer Shadow

• Format tab under Drawing Tools, Shape Fill button, Gradient

Figure 10-53: You can use cell borders to create patterned backgrounds.

Figure 10-54 shows a logo for a fictitious company called Lucerne Publishing that includes a personal photo inserted using the Picture button on the Insert tab. Otherwise, we created the logo using the following tools:

• Insert tab, Text Box button

• Insert tab, Shapes, Rectangle

• Format tab under Drawing Tools, Dialog Box Launcher in the Shape Styles group, Line Style tab

• Format tab under Drawing Tools, Text Effects button, Shadow

• Insert tab, WordArt

• Format tab under Drawing Tools, Text Fill button, Picture

• Home tab, Dialog Box Launcher in the Font group, Font tab, Equalize Character Height option

Figure 10-54: You can apply a picture to WordArt as a fill color

You can use any of the graphics shown in this section in workbooks, or you can use Copy As Picture to copy and paste them into other documents created in other programs. For more information about the Copy As Picture command, see "Using the Copy As Picture and Paste As Picture Commands" on page 397.