Microsoft hold the average user has 4 or more toolbars displayed at any one time. This represents quite a lot of the screen “real-estate”. This is especially pertinent with the advent of “wide screen” type set ups popular on many laptops. A colleague of mine has about 25 rows on display, that’s on a 17” screen! (well, “wide screen”).

I believe is that many uses pull up a menu bars and end up keeping the whole thing, for just a few of the buttons. But its easy to streamline your toolbars in excel.

Position your mouse somewhere on a toolbar (it’s best if you go for a place where there are no buttons). Right clicking will bring up a context menu, at the very bottom of which is a “Customise” option – Click it!
Next click the “Commands” tab, from here you can pick all of you favourite buttons, and simply drag them all on to ONE tool bar. Better than that, you can even drag them on to the Menu bar (which it’s self is a toolbar).
If you can’t find the button you’re looking for, try clicking on the “Toolbars” tab, then checking the tool bar which holds the button you’re after. This displays the toolbar, and you can now drag and drop the button direct from the toolbars on the screen.

Now that’s better, I’ve got my screen back!!!!