Excel Configuration Information in the Registry

Section Description
Add-In Manager Lists add-ins that appear in the Add-Ins dialog box. Add-ins that are included
with
Excel do not appear in this list. If you have an add-in entry in this list box that you
no longer use, you can remove it by using the Registry Editor.
Converters Lists additional (external) file converters that are not built into Excel.
Error Checking Holds the settings for formula error checking
File MRU Holds information about the most recently used files (which appears in the Recent
Documents list when you choose FileRecent).
Options A catch-all section; holds a wide variety of settings.
Recent Templates Stores the names of templates youve used recently.
Resiliency Information used for recovering documents.
Security Specifies the security options for opening files that contain macros.
Spell Checker Stores information about your spell checker options.
StatusBar Stores the user choices for what appears in the status bar.
UserInfo Stores information about the user.

Although you can change most of the settings via the Excel Options dialog box, you
cant change
a few settings directly from Excel (but you can use the Registry Editor to make
changes). For
example, when you select a range of cells, you may prefer that the selected cells
appear in high
contrast white-on-black. There is no way to specify this setting in Excel, but you can
add a new
Registry key like this:
1. Open the Registry Editor and locate this section:
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\14.0\Excel\Options

2. Right-click and choose NewDWORD Value.

3. Name this value Options6.
4. Right-click the Options6 key and select Modify.
5. In the Edit DWORD Value dialog box, click the Decimal option and enter 16 (see
Figure 4-10).
Figure 4-10: Setting a value for a Registry setting.