EXCEL Floating toolbars - formatting palette. MISSING

Question

Frustrated Excel Mac user here.

Have just upgraded to Microsoft 365 for 6 users from Microsoft excel for mac 2028. On my laptop first (thank goodness) as I'm now having and issue with the functionality. Its very disappointing feels like its the free numbers application my mac came with.

I loves the older version of Excel and I got very quick using the break away/popup/floating (if this is what you call them) options for some of the features in the main dock/ribbon on the top of the Excel page. I could have these small floating versions on screen floating while I colour and format my spreadsheets. This was wonderful as it meant I did not have to continually go back to the top of the screen to format cells, fonts and formula etc. The colour one does pop out however you need to close it each time and reopen it to colour a new cell very hard on the wrists :(

Sadly I have been trying now literally for a half a day to trouble shoot why this newer version does not let me float my colour palette or a formatting palette on my worksheet near to where I am working.

I have looked at mini toolbar, macros (cant really get my head around this) add ins (cant find any to suit what I need) I have even reached out to social media and got sent here.

Its really ordinary if this feature has been removed and I would not have upgraded to the latest version if I had know it was so bad.

Any assistance with this issue would be so helpful.

many thanks in advance.

PS I have images of what the floating menus look like however can't post in this area - shame.

Answer 1

The Format Shape Task Pane is comparable to those in the PC version: The pane itself is persistent & can be dragged but the individual components are not detachable. When displayed the components within it are active only when a Shape is selected, though.

However, my understanding is that the OP is referring to formatting cells, not shapes. The Format Cells dialog is a different type of device. It isn't a Task Pane, it's a modal dialog window.

Answer 2

Hi again,

If you choose the More Colors option in a color palette, the resulting Colors dialog is floating. This is true for the Format shapes, object and cells dialogs.

Answer 3

I can't test this on the Mac but on the PC the dialog box float but one can't apply the colors to a number object while it is open and you can experiment with the color without closing the dialog box. The technical term is nonmodal.

Answer 4

That's the Apple Color Picker, Jimmy. Yes, you can drag it around but it doesn't remain on screen after applying a color.

It should also be noted that since it is an Apple device it offers none of the Office Theme Colors, so anything applied from it will not update if the Theme or Theme Colors used in the document is changed: That may be a good thing or not.

Another limitation of using the Color Picker is that any colors added to the palette [Recent Colors] are provided & stored only in the document in use when the colors are selected. They aren't available in other documents.

Answer 5

We may differ on this, and we haven't heard from Shasta, but I think the question is about how the format and other panels are docked on the right and not floating by default as they used to be many years ago. We'll have to wait for Shasta to reply with the correct interpretation of the question that was asked.