Controlling the Look and Feel of the Worksheet Window

You might want to build a workbook that looks less like Excel because some people are intimidated by Excel. If you are building a workbook that must be distributed to many people who don't regularly use Excel, having it look less like Excel can improve acceptance of the workbook.

The Excel Options dialog allows you to turn off many screen elements. In the Advanced category, in the Display section, you can turn off the formula bar. This is an applicationwide setting; that is, when you disable this setting, the formula bar is disabled in all workbooks. The following settings affect the entire workbook:

Show Horizontal Scroll Bar
You can uncheck this option to hide the scroll bar at the bottom of the screen.

Show Vertical Scroll Bar
You can uncheck this option to hide the scrollbar at the side of the screen.

Show Sheet Tabs
You can uncheck this option to prevent someone from seeing all the tabs. You would usually provide a menu sheet with hyperlinks to allow the person to change from sheet to sheet. Note that if someone knows the Ctrl+Page Down and Ctrl+Page Up shortcuts, that person will still be able to navigate to other worksheets in your workbook.

The following items apply only to the current worksheet:

Show Row and Column Headers
This turns off the A, B, C, and so on column headers and the 1, 2, 3, and so on row numbers.

Show Gridlines
This turns off the lines between cells.