Understanding Backstage view in Excel 2010

In the last installment of excel 2010 features, we will explore the backstage view (or file menu) in Excel 2010.

Background on Backstage view:

Most of the windows based applications have a File menu. This is the usual place you go to create, open, save, save as, print and close. In Office 2007, Microsoft ditched menu based navigation and introduced Ribbon. They moved all the formatting, pivot, charting, formula, print etc. options to various individual ribbon tabs. But they couldnt move the functionality of File menu to a separate ribbon. Instead, they moved all this functionality to Office button – a clone of file menu.

Now, I am not sure what you felt about office button when you first saw excel 2007, but I was like “wtf?!? where do I click to open a file?!?” After a couple of days of working with office 2007, I learned to use the office button. But it remained a usability issue for most users.

Thankfully, MS rectified this problem and added a ton more features by restoring the beloved File menu in the form of backstage view.

Here is how it looks when you start excel 2010 (or any other office 2010 app):

Using Backstage view to get things done:

I have made a small illustration explaining various backstage view features, See it below:

(bold text is indicator of features that make you even more awesome)

Tips on Backstage view in Excel 2010:

• Office 2010 automatically identifies various folders you work with and shows them in “recent places”. You can quickly access these by clicking on Recent option from file menu.
• You can pin frequently used files and folders to recent list. This can save you a lot of time if you tend to work with same set of files.
• In the Recent files list, there is a check box called “quickly access…” Check that to see last 4 files used in the file menu itself.
• From Info sub menu, you can access previous versions of a file.

Share your tips and impressions of Backstage view:

Have you tried Excel 2010? What are your impressions of the File menu? Share them using comments.

You can install the free beta version (stays active until October this year) and experiences all the features first hand. Go here to download.

More articles on Excel 2010:

• How to make new ribbons in Excel 2010?
• New Features in Excel 2010 Conditional Formatting
• What are Excel Sparklines & How to use them? [Excel 2010]
• What is new in Microsoft Excel 2010? [Office 2010 Week]

Attend Free online training program on Excel 2010 features [May 25th and 26th, 2010]