For those of you who are upgrading to Microsoft Excel 2010 from an earlier version of the program, this introduction summarizes the new features in Excel 2010. One of the first things you’ll notice about Excel 2010 is that the program incorporates the ribbon, which was introduced in Excel 2007. If you used Excel 2003 or an earlier version of Excel, you’ll need to spend only a little bit of time working with the new user interface to bring yourself back up to your usual proficiency.

Managing Excel Files and Settings in the Backstage View

If you used Excel 2007, you’ll immediately notice one significant change: the Microsoft Office button, located at the top left corner of the program window in Excel 2007, has been replaced by the File tab. After releasing the 2007 Microsoft Office System, the Office User Experience team re-examined the programs’ user interfaces to determine how they could be improved. During this process, they discovered that it was possible to divide user tasks into two categories: “in” tasks, such as formatting and formula creation, which affect the contents of the workbook directly, and “out” tasks, such as saving and printing, which could be considered workbook management tasks.

When the User Experience and Excel teams focused on the Excel 2007 user interface, they discovered that several workbook management tasks were sprinkled among the ribbon tabs that contained content-related tasks. The Excel team moved all of the workbook management tasks to the File tab, which users can click to display these commands in the new Backstage view.