Quick access toolbar utility in MS Office

Have you thought about making a keyboard shortcut shorter? Sounds funny? But it’s true. Quick Access Toolbar allows to you to do just this.

Saving time is one of our foremost objectives while using Microsoft Excel. There are a number of features in MS Excel 2007 and 2010 that help us achieve that. Quick access toolbar is one such wonderful feature.

Often we find that some actions need to be repeated frequently like saving, print preview, opening new file etc. Wouldn't it be better, then, to have the shortcuts to these features right in front of you where you can use them quickly and easily? This can be done through the Quick Access Toolbar.

The Quick Access Toolbar is a customizable toolbar that allows you to store the shortcuts of the commands on the top left corner of Excel workbook. By default you will have few commands on the toolbar. However, you can add more commands to the toolbar by following these easy steps –

1. Click on the down arrow given at the end of the Quick Access Toolbar. A drop-down menu will open. Choose the option ‘More Commands’ from the list

2. A dialog box called ‘Excel Options’ will appear in front of you. 

(Alternative way of opening it in MS Excel 2010 is File Tab >> Options >> Customize Quick Access Toolbar)

3. Click on ‘Customize’ in the left. Another drop down menu will emerge. Select ‘All Commands’ from the options. 

4. You will see a complete list of commands in front of you. You can browse this list tab-wise

5. Select the commands you want on the quick access toolbar and click on ‘Add’. Here we have selected Paste. 

6. Once all the needed commands have been added, click OK. 

7. Shortcuts of all the required commands will now be on toolbar where you can access them quickly. 

8. Note that the order followed here will result in shortcuts accordingly (i.e. ALT > 1, ALT > 2, ALT 3 etc)

In next article we will see how quick access toolbar can make even the use of shortcuts redundant in some case.