A bottle of scotch, couple of movies and Microsoft Excel 2007..
That is definitely not me, at least given the former. This was what my new colleague Suvomoy exclaimed when asked "So what are you doing on New Year's Night"
I got my own hands on Excel 2007 today. (I know its pretty late, yet better late than never!)
My first thought "Am I using Harish's mac by mistake?" [Harish is my manager cum co-founder/president of uGenie] The new look of excel: so sleak, so light and aimed at providing you a very pleasant satisfying user experience. (Or may be coz I was stuck in the drought lands of Open Office for very long)
Before I brief you on my findings today,
DISCLAIMER:
1. I am not an extensive user of spreadsheets
2. I only have 2 or 3 excel sheets open on my machine most of the times. I guess (rather hope) I am getting there..
3. I don't code in VB. I don't even use 75% of the functions available on even older versions of Excel.
4. I have had just a couple of disgruntled moments when I had to live with databases or other crude ways because the data I wanted to look at had more than 65K rows.
(My company isn't going to get a Reporting tool for another one month :( )
Now back to the point
- Higher limits on many things.
Excel now supports 1M rows!! 16K columns. I can sort with 20 times more fields than older versions (3 fields only).
- Look and feel
Just create a simple pivot table and you will know what I am talking about.
- High user experience
Eg1. check out the tool bar menu and the layout. On a click on each menu item, the options under them appear flat replacing the shortcut panel which was static before. (However, I sort of still like the old drop downs as it would have occupied lesser space, and also gives a more organised feeling or has a high recap value)
Eg2. Options available for conditional formatting. They are all there! neat job.
Eg3. Best of all: Easy to use pivot table assist dialog. Can it be made any more intuitive or useful. I bet its tough.
I also think this version has better formatting , charting and recording packages.
- Better colors, more formatting options. In short better presentable features.
The exploration continues... no scotch, no movies, just Excel 2007 and ofcourse numbers :)
I got my own hands on Excel 2007 today. (I know its pretty late, yet better late than never!)
My first thought "Am I using Harish's mac by mistake?" [Harish is my manager cum co-founder/president of uGenie] The new look of excel: so sleak, so light and aimed at providing you a very pleasant satisfying user experience. (Or may be coz I was stuck in the drought lands of Open Office for very long)
Before I brief you on my findings today,
DISCLAIMER:
1. I am not an extensive user of spreadsheets
2. I only have 2 or 3 excel sheets open on my machine most of the times. I guess (rather hope) I am getting there..
3. I don't code in VB. I don't even use 75% of the functions available on even older versions of Excel.
4. I have had just a couple of disgruntled moments when I had to live with databases or other crude ways because the data I wanted to look at had more than 65K rows.
(My company isn't going to get a Reporting tool for another one month :( )
Now back to the point
- Higher limits on many things.
Excel now supports 1M rows!! 16K columns. I can sort with 20 times more fields than older versions (3 fields only).
- Look and feel
Just create a simple pivot table and you will know what I am talking about.
- High user experience
Eg1. check out the tool bar menu and the layout. On a click on each menu item, the options under them appear flat replacing the shortcut panel which was static before. (However, I sort of still like the old drop downs as it would have occupied lesser space, and also gives a more organised feeling or has a high recap value)
Eg2. Options available for conditional formatting. They are all there! neat job.
Eg3. Best of all: Easy to use pivot table assist dialog. Can it be made any more intuitive or useful. I bet its tough.
I also think this version has better formatting , charting and recording packages.
- Better colors, more formatting options. In short better presentable features.
The exploration continues... no scotch, no movies, just Excel 2007 and ofcourse numbers :)