Please Note: This article is written for users of the following Microsoft Excel versions: 97, 2000, 2002, and 2003. If you are using a later version (Excel 2007 or later), this tip may not work for you. For a version of this tip written specifically for later versions of Excel, click here: Adding a Little Animation to Your Life.

Adding a Little Animation to Your Life

Written by Allen Wyatt (last updated July 24, 2021)
This tip applies to Excel 97, 2000, 2002, and 2003


Anyone who says that Excel is boring obviously doesn't know that you can add animation to your workbooks. That's right—you can spice up your life by turning on animation for the feedback you receive from Excel. For instance, instead of seeing a new column immediately appear when you add it, with animation turned on the column will appear to "slide" into position, slyly moving existing columns to the right.

If you want to turn on feedback animation in your system, follow these steps:

  1. Choose Options from the Tools menu. You will see the Options dialog box.
  2. Click on the Edit tab. (See Figure 1.)
  3. Figure 1. The Edit tab of the Options dialog box.

  4. Make sure the Provide Feedback with Animation check box is selected.
  5. Click on OK.

If you are one of those who prefers to not waste perfectly good CPU cycles on something as frivolous as animation, then you can also use the above steps to turn off any animation. (Perhaps some other user of your system turned it on.) Just repeat the above four steps, but clear the check box in step 3.

ExcelTips is your source for cost-effective Microsoft Excel training. This tip (2737) applies to Microsoft Excel 97, 2000, 2002, and 2003. You can find a version of this tip for the ribbon interface of Excel (Excel 2007 and later) here: Adding a Little Animation to Your Life.

Author Bio

Allen Wyatt

With more than 50 non-fiction books and numerous magazine articles to his credit, Allen Wyatt is an internationally recognized author. He is president of Sharon Parq Associates, a computer and publishing services company. ...

MORE FROM ALLEN

Automatically Adjusting Height for Text Boxes

Text boxes are often used to enhance the layout of documents. You may want a text box that adjusts its height ...

Discover More

Calculating a Group Retirement Date

Calculating a retirement date can be as simple as doing some date math to see when a person reaches a certain age. ...

Discover More

Word Find and Replace (Special Offer)

Word Find and Replace can help super-charge your document editing tasks. Another way you can increase your ...

Discover More

Solve Real Business Problems Master business modeling and analysis techniques with Excel and transform data into bottom-line results. This hands-on, scenario-focused guide shows you how to use the latest Excel tools to integrate data from multiple tables. Check out Microsoft Excel 2013 Data Analysis and Business Modeling today!

More ExcelTips (menu)

Changing Gridline Color

Gridlines are very helpful in seeing where cells are located on the screen. You are not limited to black gridlines; ...

Discover More

Specifying the Behavior of the Enter Key

When you press Enter while adding information to a worksheet, Excel normally drops to the next cell down in the column. ...

Discover More

Enlarging the Formula Bar

The Formula bar is used to display the formula that appears in a cell. You may want to modify how the Formula bar is ...

Discover More
Subscribe

FREE SERVICE: Get tips like this every week in ExcelTips, a free productivity newsletter. Enter your address and click "Subscribe."

View most recent newsletter.

Comments

If you would like to add an image to your comment (not an avatar, but an image to help in making the point of your comment), include the characters [{fig}] (all 7 characters, in the sequence shown) in your comment text. You’ll be prompted to upload your image when you submit the comment. Maximum image size is 6Mpixels. Images larger than 600px wide or 1000px tall will be reduced. Up to three images may be included in a comment. All images are subject to review. Commenting privileges may be curtailed if inappropriate images are posted.

What is two more than 7?

There are currently no comments for this tip. (Be the first to leave your comment—just use the simple form above!)


This Site

Got a version of Excel that uses the menu interface (Excel 97, Excel 2000, Excel 2002, or Excel 2003)? This site is for you! If you use a later version of Excel, visit our ExcelTips site focusing on the ribbon interface.

Newest Tips
Subscribe

FREE SERVICE: Get tips like this every week in ExcelTips, a free productivity newsletter. Enter your address and click "Subscribe."

(Your e-mail address is not shared with anyone, ever.)

View the most recent newsletter.