Excel Intro:
Task Pane

Did you want Working with Numbers: 2007,2010,2013,2016 or español

Excel 2002/2003 and the other Office programs add a new feature to the application window, the Task Pane. This pane displays at the right of your document and changes, based on what you are doing. Its purpose is to give you easy access to frequently used commands related to what you are doing.

Excel window with the default task pane, New Workbook

Excel 2002 window with default Task Pane

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Before you start...

Project 1: Excel Intro
   Interface
       Toolbars
       Task Pane
       Smart Tags
       Open Excel
    Select & Navigate
    Common Tasks
    Summary
    Quiz
    Exercises

Project 2: Excel Basics

Project 3: Format & Arrange

Project 4: Groups & Formulas

Project 5: Design

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Glossary
Appendix

Different Panes for Different Tasks

There are several different sets of commands that display in the Task Pane. Some are available for all Office programs, and some are specific to the program you are in. Excel does not have many panes that are special to it, while Word has several.

Office XP:

New Document
Clipboard
Search
Insert Clip Art
Basic search (on File menu)

Office 2003:

Getting Started
Help
Search Results
Clip Art
Research
Clipboard
File Search (on File menu)
New Document
Shared Workspace
Document Updates

Excel 2002 does not add any special panes.

Excel 2003 adds:

Template Help
XML Source

Sample Office Panes By default, only certain buttons and menu commands for Task Panes are shown. You can customize the menus and toolbars, if you wish, to include commands or buttons that are not shown.
New Workbook - Lists recent documents and links for new documents and templates. Menu: File \| New The New button on the toolbar does not open the pane. It just creates a new blank document.		Clipboard - The Office Clipboard keeps track of up to 24 selections or images that you copied or cut in Office programs. This is not the same as the Windows Clipboard, which only remembers the last thing you copied. Menu: Edit \| Office Clipboard

Basic Search - Allows you to search selected folders or online sites or just the current document. Searches for the text you specify, but primarily in Microsoft Office files or web pages. You need to let Office index your documents for this to work. Button:Search Menu: File \| Search		Insert Clip Art - Opens a search form to look for images, then it shows thumbnails of the results. Not all image formats will show thumbnails. Menu: Insert \| Picture \| Clip Art

Managing the Task Pane

Default pane

All of the Office XP programs will show the New document pane first, by default. In the case of Excel, it is called New Workbook. Other programs use an appropriate name for that program, such as New Document for Word and New Page or Web for FrontPage.

In Office 2003, the Getting Started pane shows first, by default.

Switch

As you work, the pane will appear or change if you use certain menu commands or toolbar buttons. You can customize the toolbars to show a button for a pane that doesn't have a button in the default toolbar.

Pane:Getting Started - List of task panes available Pane: New Workbook - List of task panes available You can switch to a different task pane from the pane itself. Clicking the arrow at the top of the pane will open a list of available panes for you to choose from. There may be more choices in a bottom section of the list, depending on which Office program you are using.

Hide pane

You can hide the Task Pane by clicking its Close button. Be careful not to click the button that closes the document, or the one that closes Excel. (Are we getting too many Close buttons yet??)

Show pane

If the Task Pane has been closed, you can show it again with the menu command View | Task Pane .

If you have a Chart sheet open in Excel, you will not see the Task Pane command on the View menu. But it is still available with View | Toolbars | Task Pane .