Page 211 - Excel 2013 All-in-One For Dummies

take such an action, consider how much time and effort would be required to manually restore the worksheet to its previous state if you make a mis- take in carrying out your editing change.
After you use the Undo feature to reverse an editing change, the Redo button on the Quick Access toolbar becomes active. The Redo command item on the Redo button’s drop-down menu has the name of the latest type of editing that you just reversed with the Undo button, such as Redo Clear when the last action you took was to restore a cell entry that you just deleted.
You use the Redo command to restore the worksheet to the condition that it was in before you last selected the Undo command. As with using the Undo button on the Quick Access toolbar, when you click the drop-down button attached to the Redo button, you can drag through a series of actions that you want repeated (assuming that you used the Undo command multiple times). You can also restore edits that you’ve undone one at a time by pressing Ctrl+Y.
You can use Undo and Redo to toggle between a Before and After view of your spreadsheet. For example, suppose that you update an entry in a cell that
was used in formulas throughout a data table. As soon as you enter the new number in this cell, Excel recalculates the table and displays the new results. To once again view the original version of the table before you make this latest change, you use Undo (Ctrl+Z). After checking some values in the original table, you then restore the latest change to its numbers by selecting the Redo command (Ctrl+Y). You can then continue in this manner as long as you want, switching between Before and After versions by holding down the Ctrl key as you type Z and then type Y, alternating between Undo and then Redo.
Cell Editing 101 193
Editing in the cell versus on the Formula bar
When doing simple editing to a cell’s contents, the question arises as to whether it’s better to edit the contents in the cell directly or edit the contents on the Formula bar. When editing short entries that fit entirely within the current column width, it really is a matter of personal choice. Some people prefer editing on the Formula bar because it’s out of the way of other cells in the same region of the worksheet. Other people prefer editing on the Formula bar because they find it easier to click the insertion point with the I-beam mouse pointer at precisely the place in the entry that needs editing. (When you press F2 to edit in the cell, Excel always positions the insertion point at the very end of the entry, and when you double-click the thick white mouse
pointer in the cell, you really can’t tell exactly where you’re putting the insertion point until you finish double-clicking, at which time you see the flashing insertion point.)
When it comes to editing longer cell entries (that is, text entries that spill over into empty neighboring cells, and numbers that, if their digits weren’t truncated by the number format assigned, wouldn’t fit within the current cell width), you probably will want to edit their contents on the Formula bar. You can click the Formula Bar button (the carat symbol turned downward) to display the entire contents of the cell without obscuring any of the cells of the worksheet.
Book II Chapter 3
Editing and Proofing Worksheets