Microsoft Office

What’s New in Excel 2007? 2
Consolidated Options
In the past, Excel provided far too many dialog boxes to set various options. In Excel 2007, most dialog
boxes have been consolidated into a massive Excel Options dialog box (see Figure 2.4). To display this dialog
box, choose File ➪ Excel Options.
The options are grouped into tabs, which you select on the left. Locating some of the options still isn’t
easy, but the new implementation is much better than it used to be. The Excel Options dialog box is also
resizable — just click and drag the lower right corner to change the size.
FIGURE 2.4
The newly designed Excel Options dialog box.
SmartArt
Excel 2007 still includes a wide assortment of Shapes that you can use to create visual diagrams, such as
flow charts, org charts, or diagrams that depict relationships. But the new SmartArt feature is a much better
tool for such tasks. You can quickly add shadows, reflection, glow, and other special effects.
Figure 2.5 shows two SmartArt diagrams. The diagram on the left is the original, and the one on the right is
the same diagram after a single mouse click that changed the layout and style.
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