Continuing on with our “What’s inside Excel Everest?” series, which showcases the introductory, “why is this important?” paragraphs found within Excel Everest.

…why is it important to learn?..

Shapes, objects, and pictures

The Insert tab in Excel has a bunch of functions that let you create content in your Excel file that is not contained in a cell itself. You can think of the objects you create with the Insert tab as sitting in a thin layer on top of the cells. This text box, for instance, was created using the Insert tab. Many of the items in this toolbar will be similar to those you may have used in Microsoft Word or PowerPoint.  The lines, arrows, text boxes, and other shapes found in these menus allow you to make your Excel file look clean and logical.

It’s also important to understand how these objects are organized. You can group objects in Excel. This essentially glues them together to make them easier to move around, re-size, etc. Most of these tasks are completed in a new formatting tab that will appear after you create an object and then select it. If it’s a text box or shape, a “Drawing Tools” format tab will appear. If it’s a picture, a “Picture” tab will appear.  These tabs hold a lot of the formatting options for objects. Alternatively, you can right click on any object and select “format shape” to complete most of the same tasks.

There are also various shapes you can draw to use for a flowchart, to add text callouts to your worksheet, etc. Understanding object properties and knowing the basics of good object formatting makes your Excel life easier and the life of whoever sees your document easier. You can also easily select objects with a special “object selecting” tool (we’ll go over this in the exercises).