Have you been using Excel 2007 any differently?

[SkipVought]

I am particularly interested in Excel, but if you have a similar interest in another MS Office application, then feel free to start a thread for for that one.

In this thread, please post instances where you have utilized the NEW features and capabilities of Excel 2007, and how that has impacted your effectiveness. I am particularly interested in the experiences of power users, but welcome any contribution.

I must confess that although I have 3 machines at home with Office 2007, I spend nearly all my computer time on my work laptop Office 2003. But, since 2007 is coming later this month to our company, I know that I need to get up-to-speed.

So please help me out, and in doing so, you'll be sharing some good stuff with all of us, that I trust will be mutually beneficial.

Skip,

_{Just traded in my old subtlety...
for a NUANCE!}

 

[kjv1611]

Some things I've been doing differently, and changing more all the time:
[OL][LI]I think using Pivot Tables in 07 is easier than any version past, and as such, I've used them on more occasions.[/LI]
[LI]Although, things have changed, and some things may not seem as easy to do, in general, it takes me fewer keystrokes and/or mouse clicks to get what I want[/LI]
[LI]I am using "format as table" more and more often. I really like it, b/c in a couple clicks, it'll add a nice looking format, as well as sortable and filterable fields.[/LI]
[LI]One thing that's important for sure: Learn to enable the Developer Tab under Office Button - Excel Options - Popular - Show Developer tab in the Ribbon[/LI]
[LI]Not sure I do this any more or less than before, but I find importing data from SQL Server to be a much more enjoyable experience. It automatically formats the data as a table, and you seem to have much better control over things there..[/LI]
[LI]Another big thing with table formats. (this may have been in older versions, but I never used if so).. You can now work formulas a little differently.. you can refer to actual fields, rather than Cell addresses if you so choose, and if you built a formula by clicking on the cells to include, it'll format that way, anyway. This sometimes makes copying a formula down much easier. Also, in some circumstances, it'll autofill a formula for you as soon as you enter it, which is really cool![/LI]
[LI]Being that Excel 2007 allows for just over 1 million rows vs the 66k+ rows in previous versions, this is helpful on some occasions. However, I find I tend to filter out the data enough before it gets to Excel, that the row count doesn't really matter... it might have mattered to me more a few years ago.[/LI]
[LI]AutoSum, Outlines, etc, seem to be smarter - don't know that I can describe it accurately, but it all seem to work much better.[/LI]
[LI]This one is primarily for Word - I can change the page layout type settings such as margins, etc much more quickly. You can select from "narrow" margins, "normal", etc.. or "custom"... all in just a couple quick clicks.[/LI]
[LI]Font and related changes happen right in front of your eyes, with a live preview type setup - probably an optino that can be turned off.[/LI]
[LI]I use the Number section of the Home tab more frequency now than I used to. You can single-click change a cell or range of cells to an Accounting Currency format, or change the use of commas on/off, change decimal positions, etc, all very easily there..[/LI]
[LI]One annoying thing has been in how you set up shortcuts. The ribbon isn't very customizeable, best I can tell so far. I have setup a few things under the Quick Access Toolbar - next to the Office button, but I much prefer the old way of putting a button anywhere I pleased, basically, in the toolbars..[/LI]
[LI]Angain for tables... there's the whole Table Tools - Design tab that shows up when you select a table on a sheet.. works rather nicely, gives lots of quick methos for changing things.[/LI]
[LI]Almost forgot - Conditional Formatting is much different, so takes a little of getting used to, but overall, I think it offers more options, and is easier to get what you want out of it.[/LI]
[LI]In some ways, the new ribbon layout seems to make it easier to find things. I believe that if I had never used previous versions of Office, that I'd be able to get up to speed faster with '07 than with any version prior.[/LI][/OL]

Well, probably more stuff, but I've typed too much already as it is.

 

[1DMF]

Best advice I can give is an overall heads up, as our use of Excel is very simple.

A lot of good features are missing from the new ribbon menu, here are some very important, used everyday options I've found so far...

1. scanning into word - there is no option whatsoever to do this any more, you have to set up your own macro and add a stupid extra icon to the ribbon.

2. send to recipient from word... same as above , once again you have to manually create a macro and add a stupid icon to the ribbon.

3. MS outlook will no longer display form data so if you have applications that send copies of forms filled in to the user by email and they have MSO2007 they will think the form is blank as MS deletes ALL data from the HTML form.

That was the most stupid, annoying, nearly cost us valuable members & money! change I have even seen those idiots at microsoft perform.

So far we've not used MS Office any differently than we have since MSO2000, all MSO2007 has done is cause us a headache, cost us money, required re-training of staff, re-programming of applications and bang our heads looking for options that don't exist anymore.

In our users opinion (over 250), MSO2007 is the worst version of Office MS has ever made, it belongs on the junk pile with Vista!

OK after my rant I guess I should point out that adding the extra options back into office ribbon menu is easy and there are plenty of web pages out there with step-by-step instructions.

But why the hell would you want to waste your time searching the web for fixes to stuff that was never broken.

Also I don't know if you can roll the changes / macro's out en-mass, you may have to do each machine separately or write some code to automatically set it up some how, dunno, I've added the optins on an adhoc basis as users complain.

I got better things to do with my time, infact MSO2007 has just wasted even more of my time with this damn post - oh the irony!




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