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

Converting Forced Text to Numbers

If you have some numbers stored in cells that are formatted as text, you may get some surprises when you try to use those ...

Discover More

Displaying the Control Panel

The Control Panel is (or has been) the heart and soul of controlling Windows. How you display the control panel, however, ...

Discover More

Improper Index Page Numbers

Adding an index to a document can be a nice finishing touch, particularly if the document is a long one. What happens if ...

Discover More

Best-Selling VBA Tutorial for Beginners Take your Excel knowledge to the next level. With a little background in VBA programming, you can go well beyond basic spreadsheets and functions. Use macros to reduce errors, save time, and integrate with other Microsoft applications. Fully updated for the latest version of Office 365. Check out Microsoft 365 Excel VBA Programming For Dummies today!

More ExcelTips (menu)

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

Turning on Placeholders

A large number of graphics in a worksheet can slow down Excel. One way to compensate is to turn on picture placeholders, ...

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
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 nine minus 1?

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.