Excel Selection Pane: A great tool you shouldn't miss.

When working with Excel spreadsheets, we sometimes accidentally click on the wrong cell repeatedly, or charts in Excel become unselectable. In such cases, you should use the Selection Pane in Excel to easily manage any objects within the Excel data you are working on. Below is a guide on how to use the Selection Pane in Excel.

 

Instructions on how to open the Excel Selection Pane

Simply click on the Find & Select tool and then select Selection Pane below to open the Excel sidebar.

 

Immediately afterwards, on the right side, you will see the Selection Pane with all the objects in the data table.

Manage layers and stacking order in the Selection Pane.

Currently, the selected object is displayed in the Selection Pane.

When you click on an object in the Selection Pane , a border around that object will appear in Excel.

How to rearrange the layers

The order of names in the Selection Pane matches the order of items on the grid; the item at the top of the list is the first item in the spreadsheet, and the item at the bottom of the list is after all other items.

To rearrange them, simply click and drag the item name up or down in the list.

 

Hide objects in the Selection Pane

Turn individual display modes on/off.

Each object in the Selection Pane has an eye icon . When you click this eye icon, the object will be hidden in the Excel grid. Click it again to show the object in Excel.

Hide all objects at once.

Right in the Selection Pane, you'll find the Hide All and Show All options to hide or show all objects, and show all objects again.

If you're entering large amounts of data and your spreadsheet is cluttered with icons, text boxes, and images, pressing Hide All will quickly hide all objects in Excel.

Rename and group objects in the Selection Pane.

Rename an object in the Selection Pane

Simply double-click on the object you want to rename and then enter the new name for the object.

 

Group objects in the Selection Pane

In addition to grouping objects directly in the Excel grid, you can also group them from the Selection Pane. Hold down the Ctrl key and click on the objects you want to group. Then, in the Shape Format or Picture Format tab, click Group or press Ctrl+G.

Then we just enter a name for this group of objects to manage them, and that's it.