As a PC user for over twenty years now, I started with a monochrome screen, DOS, and Lotus 123 as the major spreadsheet program of the day.
Some of you go that far back too.
As good as Lotus 123 was, I was very impressed the first time I used Excel in 1989.
I remember the main advantage at that time was its' WYSIWYG interface and more flexible charting.
Later on in version 5, I discovered multiple worksheets (now taken for granted), over 16,000 rows and some nice analysis tools such as three-level sorting, auto-filter and the very capable pivot table.
This latest version of Excel is still very impressive, building on many of these same features.
One of the first things you notice is that Excel 2007 now offers 1,048,576 rows and 16,384 columns and 2GB memory management (vs.
65,536 rows, 256 columns and 1GB).
Because of this, cell addresses can have three letters representing the column (up to XFD instead of IV).
The old worksheet had 16,777,216 cells.
An Excel 2007 worksheet has 17,179,869,184 cells (1,024 times as many).
Along with this greater capacity is a new file format (*.
xlsx) using XML, which allows for reduced file size.
On one workbook I use, the size was reduced from 463K (saved as xls) to 267K (saved as xlsx), over a 40% reduction by switching to the new format.
Formatting is much improved in Excel 2007.
Excel always had styles, which is a feature more commonly used in Word or PowerPoint.
It allows for a conglomeration of format settings to be saved and re-used under a unique name.
For instance, in this Word document, the main paragraphs use the 'normal' style.
The heading at the top uses the 'Heading 1' style which has a larger font and is bold.
In Excel, I rarely used styles, due to the extra effort to find and use the styles in prior versions, and the relatively limited amount of formatting usually done in a worksheet.
In Excel 2007, a style gallery in the ribbon under the home tab conveniently displays several styles, allowing for quick formatting choices for background color, font, font color, number format, and borders.
Simply highlight the cells you want to change and pick your style.
One last detail to mention is that there are now themes in Microsoft Office 2007, which are like styles, but more global in their result, changing an entire file's, fonts, colors, line and fill effects.
Once a theme is defined in any Microsoft Office 2007 application, it is available in the others too.
Conditional formatting has been a part of Excel's feature set for years.
It is commonly used for highlighting cells that meet certain criteria, such as changing a cell color to red if the entry was less than a specific amount.
This is still part of Excel 2007, but it has now been enhanced to format an entire range of cells at once, changing the cell background by color and shade, in order to differentiate the values visually for easier analysis.
Much like a weather map showing severe weather gradations, you can set choose a conditional format color scale to shade the smaller numbers in blue and the larger ones deep orange.
Not only can you do this differentiation with color scales, but also shading of a portion of the cell with the data bars feature, the larger the portion shaded, the larger the number relative to the others in the selection, much like applying a bar chart directly in the cell.
Finally, for a little fun, there are a large assortment of icons that can be used to quickly show the relative size of entries in a range, including stop lights, flags, arrows and even cell-phone-like reception strength bars.
Some of you go that far back too.
As good as Lotus 123 was, I was very impressed the first time I used Excel in 1989.
I remember the main advantage at that time was its' WYSIWYG interface and more flexible charting.
Later on in version 5, I discovered multiple worksheets (now taken for granted), over 16,000 rows and some nice analysis tools such as three-level sorting, auto-filter and the very capable pivot table.
This latest version of Excel is still very impressive, building on many of these same features.
One of the first things you notice is that Excel 2007 now offers 1,048,576 rows and 16,384 columns and 2GB memory management (vs.
65,536 rows, 256 columns and 1GB).
Because of this, cell addresses can have three letters representing the column (up to XFD instead of IV).
The old worksheet had 16,777,216 cells.
An Excel 2007 worksheet has 17,179,869,184 cells (1,024 times as many).
Along with this greater capacity is a new file format (*.
xlsx) using XML, which allows for reduced file size.
On one workbook I use, the size was reduced from 463K (saved as xls) to 267K (saved as xlsx), over a 40% reduction by switching to the new format.
Formatting is much improved in Excel 2007.
Excel always had styles, which is a feature more commonly used in Word or PowerPoint.
It allows for a conglomeration of format settings to be saved and re-used under a unique name.
For instance, in this Word document, the main paragraphs use the 'normal' style.
The heading at the top uses the 'Heading 1' style which has a larger font and is bold.
In Excel, I rarely used styles, due to the extra effort to find and use the styles in prior versions, and the relatively limited amount of formatting usually done in a worksheet.
In Excel 2007, a style gallery in the ribbon under the home tab conveniently displays several styles, allowing for quick formatting choices for background color, font, font color, number format, and borders.
Simply highlight the cells you want to change and pick your style.
One last detail to mention is that there are now themes in Microsoft Office 2007, which are like styles, but more global in their result, changing an entire file's, fonts, colors, line and fill effects.
Once a theme is defined in any Microsoft Office 2007 application, it is available in the others too.
Conditional formatting has been a part of Excel's feature set for years.
It is commonly used for highlighting cells that meet certain criteria, such as changing a cell color to red if the entry was less than a specific amount.
This is still part of Excel 2007, but it has now been enhanced to format an entire range of cells at once, changing the cell background by color and shade, in order to differentiate the values visually for easier analysis.
Much like a weather map showing severe weather gradations, you can set choose a conditional format color scale to shade the smaller numbers in blue and the larger ones deep orange.
Not only can you do this differentiation with color scales, but also shading of a portion of the cell with the data bars feature, the larger the portion shaded, the larger the number relative to the others in the selection, much like applying a bar chart directly in the cell.
Finally, for a little fun, there are a large assortment of icons that can be used to quickly show the relative size of entries in a range, including stop lights, flags, arrows and even cell-phone-like reception strength bars.
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