Office - Excel impressions and tip
I've been using Excel 2007 for quite a while now and am I am starting to love
it.
Ok so I suffered from the "Where the hell do I find option x" syndrome due to
the new ribbon bar, but as I had heard before this is a short term issue, you
will eventually understand how the options are configured and be able to find
things very easily.
This brings me to my first observation, the Ribbon bar. The way the ribbon
bar is configured does provide a much greater surface area for items, this means
that most items are only 2 clicks away. More importantly I have found many of
the options I use now accessible in 1 click. This includes, "Wrap text" ,
vertical text position and standard formatting.
It is obvious that the standard office toolbars haven't changed much over the
years and the Ribbon has take on feedback from users so that the most used items
are easily accessible.
The second major observation is formatting. This has taken a huge leap and is
just great, especially when dealling with large sets of data, where the addition
of vsiauls makes the data stand out from the page without the user having to
read every value.
Whats more I am someone that used conditional formatting extensively, this is
now an option directly on the ribbon and provides access to builtin formatting
and also a means to customise the formatting. If you've been to any demos of
Office 2007 or even BI in SQL Server 2005 you will have seen the data bars,
color scales and icon sets.
Finally functions, I haven't looked at depth into what new functions are
available I just know that 2 that have appeared are COUNTIFS and SUMIFS
My parting word is a tip. Have you noticed the symbols on the ribbon bar
what it does is expand that section of the ribbon
bar, or opens up the full dialog window for that section of brings up a floating
dialog for that section. This is great for getting styles working, as a floating
dialog stays even if you change the ribbon selection
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