Live Preview

Excel 2007 introduced a concept called Live Preview. Using this, you can view how the format change you are about to make actually look like, even before applying that change. This saves you the time you would otherwise spend on applying various formats and removing the applied format if you don’t like it.

You can access this feature by hovering the mouse over desired format options and wait a second, Excel will automatically update the selection to show how that will look like once the highlighted format applied. You just need to click on those options if you fancy or move away from it if you don’t like. That’s all.

Example:

To check different font sizes: Select the cells you want to change font size and Home tab > Font group > click the Font Size box down-arrow, and then move the pointer over different font sizes. Observe the cells you selected, they will change the size as you hover the mouse.

You can preview font formatting, quick styles, picture formatting using this feature. If you are using Excel 2010, you can also preview the Paste commands such as Keep Source Column Widths, No Borders, or Keep Source Formatting.

Though this option is awesome, if you feel that you don’t require live preview, there is an option to turn this feature off. Let’s see how.

Excel 2007:

Click the Microsoft Office button > Excel Options > Popular tab > Top options for working with Excel segment > clear the Enable Live Preview check box.

Excel 2010 and later:

File tab > Options > General > User Interface options segment > clear the Enable Live Preview check box.

Follow the same steps but check the box if you want to enable this feature.