Microsoft Excel: Change The Background Of The Worksheet

Problem: Excel looks boring. You generally have black text on white background, with gray lines. If you have an opening menu worksheet in your workbook, you can change the background to any picture.

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Strategy: From the menu, select Format – Sheet – Background. Choose any image from your computer. The image will be tiled to form the background, as shown in Fig. 1193.

You might wish to turn off the gridline display on this menu. Go to Tools – Options – View. In the lower left corner, turn off the Gridlines display, as shown in Fig. 1194.

This will present a cleaner view of the worksheet, as shown in Fig. 1195.

Optionally, you might turn off the sheet tabs, row and column headers, and the scroll bars. This gives the person using the spreadsheet an opening screen that does not necessarily look a whole lot like Excel, as shown in Fig. 1196.

Some people also like to uncheck the Formula Bar and Status Bar from the View menu, as shown in Fig. 1197. Personally, I think this is going too far. After all, someone has to use the Forecast sheet that is also in this book. If you turn off all of the scroll bars, formula bar, status bar, and index tabs, it will be pretty hard to actually use Excel. The Row & Column Headers is independent of the worksheet, but all of the other settings apply to the whole workbook.

You do not want an Excel rookie to be forced to use Excel without a formula bar or status bar. This is the second worksheet in the workbook. Even though you made most of the changes to the Menu worksheet, they apply to the entire workbook.

Gotcha: The background will never print. The following chapter, Add IV a Printable Background to Your Spreadsheet, explains how to create a background that will print.

Additional Information: In order to change the background image on the worksheet, you must remove the first image. From the menu, select Format – Sheet – Delete Background, as shown in Fig. 1198.

As shown in Fig. 1199, here is a menu that was built for Bedrock Construction in Uniontown, Ohio. They do the stone fronts on buildings and homes. The background is a small image of stone, which is tiled to fill the screen.

Summary: Make Excel look less sterile by adding a background image to the worksheet.

Commands Discussed: Format – Sheet – Background; Format – Sheet – Remove – Background; Tools – Options – View; View – Status Bar; View – Formula Bar

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Microsoft Excel: Change The Background Of The Worksheet

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