Hi Alan

I have been using XL2007 since the beginning of the year.
I have all previous versions still loaded on my machine.
I like XL2007 very much indeed. Overall I think it is a great
improvement.
Sure, everything is in a different place, but it doesn't take long to
figure out where.
All sorts of things are nicer including entering new formulae.
Data Tables are much better, and as you scroll down a table, the header
row Automatically replaces column A, B C etc, and acts as a Freeze pane
without you even selecting that feature.
COUNTIFS and SUMIFS do work and can be very useful.
The removal of the limit of 7 levels of nesting is OK, but not something
I would rave about as it already becomes unwieldy for me at the level of
7 and should be done another way.
Filtering is much improved and Pivot Tables are much easier to create
and use.
There are still problems, yes. Some Charts created in earlier versions
don't seem to function correctly and a number of people who do a lot of
Charting have complained.
Some people have complained about speed, and I am sure their complaints
are real - though I have not experienced that yet.

Extra columns and rows are nice, but I have never found the limits of
previous XL versions to be particularly limiting.

is it a must have?
No
is it nice to have?
Yes
Will it get better
Undoubtedly - as new SP's are released.

If I want to do something really quickly, I still revert to XL2003. Why?
Familiarity and faster to use the menus as I know my way around better.
But it is no good fighting progress. The Ribbon is the way for the
future so one just has to bite the bullet and get on with it.

There is an Add-in that I have been Trialling, which does give access to
all the old menu structure as well - so one can have the best of all
worlds. I suppose that really is a "prop" though, and in reality one
would be better off becoming familiar with the new structure.

Has this helped you?
Probably not, but it is as honest an assessment as I can give you at the
present time.

--
Regards

Roger Govier


"Alan" wrote in message
...
Hi,
I've been using Excel for many years, my current version is from
Office XP.
Is it worthwhile upgrading to 2007?
Is there any fundamental improvement like the introduction of Pivot
Tables
years ago, or is it mainly cosmetic?
I know it has lots more columns and rows available but apart from the
nuisance of not being able to use 365 columns for every day of the
year that's
never really been a problem to me.
I'm told that there are formula options like COUNTIFS which will do
what
SUMPRODUCT does looking for two values in two columns but I haven't
seen
them, if they exist are they worthwhile?
The reason I ask is that I've just bought a new PC with Vista, not
from
choice, the old one gave up the ghost. Vista has its good points like
the
search facility which I must admit is good.
There are however a lot of issues with it like incompatibility with
long
standing software, constant hard drive activity from updates etc, the
'Run'
command and others are in a different places and the Control Panel is
different for no
real reason as far as I can see. It looks pretty but I think MS have a
habit
of fixing things that aren't broken. Is that the case with Excel 2007
or is it a must have?
Any advice appreciated,
Regards,
Alan.