How to Use and Customise the Status Bar in Microsoft Excel

It’s like having a trusty sidekick

Excel’s status bar is one of the hidden gems (and an unsung hero) that makes it thedefault spreadsheet softwareyou turn to. It quietly resides at the bottom of the Excel window, often overlooked but brimming with valuable information and customization options. In this article, we will look at it and show you how to take advantage of it.

Excel Status Bar Default Options

Even before you customize the Excel status bar, it’ll display some helpful information and give you access to some useful functionalities. The common Excel options you can find as default on the status bar are:

Let’s see what each of them does and how you can use them.

At the leftmost side of the Excel status bar, you’ll find the cell mode indicator. It’ll inform you about the status of the currently selected cell. There are four different status modes:

To the left of the Cell Mode is the Macro Recording icon. You can use it torecord a series of actions as macrosor keyboard shortcuts and use them to tackle repetitive work in Microsoft Excel. To initiate the recording process, click this icon and perform the action within the Excel spreadsheet as usual. To stop recording, click the icon again. Note: the icon will change into a transparent square while recording.

Next to the Macro Recording icon on the left side of the status bar is the Accessibility Check feature. When you enable it, Excel will examine your spreadsheet and determine the cell formatting, document structure, and readability. It’ll then highlight potential problems that might prevent people with different kinds of disabilities or accessibility needs from reading your Excel document.

The status bar will displayAccessibility: Investigateif there are potential problems in your document. Clicking this text will open a separate panel to the right where you’ll find suggestions on making it accessible to everyone.

The Page Number option on the Excel status bar shows you how many printable pages your worksheet has and the current page. But you’ll have to switch to the Page Layout view mode if you want to see the number of pages.

The middle of the status bar will display some statistical and mathematical options instead of the page number when in Normal view mode. Select the cells containing data, and these options will show up. You’ll be able to see the following:

You’ll notice the three Workbook view options to the right of the page number. They allow you quick access to the viewing modes and keep the focus on your work. You can find these workbook views in the View tab on the ribbon, too.

Normal Viewis the default worksheet view. It displays the standard gridlines, headers, and footers.

The rightmost option is the Zoom tool. You can use it to modify the level of the workbook’s magnification. Use the zoom slider bar to zoom in or out, or opt for the plus (+) to zoom in and minus (-) to zoom out.

The zoom percentage displayed in the screen’s right corner lets you know your workbook’s current zoom level. If you click on the number, a zoom dialog box will open where you can set the magnification percentage for your worksheet.

How to Customize Status Bar in Excel

Excel lets you customize the status bar and add certain functions and options to suit your needs. To do that, simply right-click anywhere on the Status Bar to get the full list of options. Let’s look at some additional status bar options available to you.

You can right-click the status bar and select the Workbook Statistics option to see key information about your workbook. When you click on the Workbook statistics on the status bar, it’ll open a separate dialog box containing details about the current Excel sheet and the entire workbook. You can learn how many sheets are in a workbook, how many cells have data if there are any tables, pivot tables, and formulas.

Enable Caps, Num, and Scroll Lock so the status bar indicator visually reminds you if these keyboard keys are currently off or on. That will help you to avoid making mistakes while typing.

Overtype mode is handy when you need to replace the existing content of the cell with new content. This mode will allow you to overwrite the existing data as you type the new data.

You can toggle the overtype mode on and off by pressing theInsertkey on your keyboard. When the Overtype mode is enabled, the status bar will display Overtype as an indicator. This indicator won’t show up when the mode is disabled.

To wrap it up, the status bar in Microsoft Excel is like a trusty sidekick, quietly offering you valuable insights and customization options as you navigate your spreadsheets. Understanding how to use and customize the status bar can significantly enhance your productivity, providing valuable insights into your data and allowing you to tailor Excel to your unique needs, so keep experimenting with it.

Nicolae is a Jack of all trades technology writer with a focus on hardware, programming languages, and AI image-processing software. Over the last five years, he has ghostwritten numerous tech how-to guides and books on a variety of topics ranging from Linux to C# programming and game development. Nicolae loves everything that has to do with technology and his goal is to share his knowledge and experience with others.Read Nicolae’s Full Bio

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