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.

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.

Hi Roger,

'Has this helped you?'

Yes it has, very much indeed.
Thanks for your reply, that exactly the kind of impartial assessment I
wanted to hear.
Not sure if I'll go for it or not yet. I'm wondering if one actually used a
million rows and God knows how many columns how it would affect calculation
speed. I would have thought that it would be down to processor speed and
RAM, not Excel itself.
Also COUNTIFS etc can easily be done with SUMPRODUCT, so it may be slightly
easier in that respect but no big deal. I agree with you on nested IF's too.
I'm interested in seeing the Pivot Tables if they are better as you describe
as well.
I think I'll make a few phone calls and see if I can have a look at it from
someone else who has it!
Thanks again,
Alan.
"Roger Govier" wrote in message
...
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.

I think Roger has given an honest assessment of it. I'll say this: if you
think they moved things around in Vista, wait until you see the Office apps.
But as Roger said, 'get over it'. Eventually, be it tomorrow or years from
now, you will eventually be using that interface. I've found that the Help
is improved and asking how to do something that you were familiar with in XP
or 2003 will result in good instructions for doing it in 2007. HELP itself
is improved. Not perfect, but better than before

Roger's question/answer session was good: must have? not if what you have
now is doing the job you need and there is nothing specifically in 2007 that
would make your life incredibly simpler:
http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/ex...738731033.aspx look and see.

Nice to have: yes, you'll be ahead of others in the learning curve for it,
and you can even participate in these forums finding out how to make it do
what you need it to do and discuss problems/solutions with others pretty much
at the same learning level of 2007 as yourself.

Will it get better: yes, I think we're going to see an SP1 (no, I don't have
any inside info) that will take care of the complaints we've seen coming from
specific areas such as macro recording and charting and probably others I
haven't heard about or noticed in these discussion forums.

If I personally have complaints about it, it is in the area of charting.
I'm very disappointed in the experience (I can do some charts 10x as fast on
a single core, several year old CPU with half the memory on the system in
Excel 2003 than I can on a new Core2 E6600 system running Excel 2007). But
in other areas, I really don't have any complaints of serious note at all.
They speak of improvements to pivot charts and you mentioned them- I cannot
address that, as they are not something I use much at all. Conditional
formatting is much improved and should eventually do away with a lot of the
"how do I get conditional formatting for more than 3 conditions" requests we
see so often hear.




"Alan" wrote:

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.

Thanks to you too,
Good advice. As you say, if MS decide to change something then we have
little choice but to go along with it. Vista will be on almost all PC's in a
few years and XP and it's predecessors won't be supported so if you don't
like it, hard luck or MAC.
I still think that MS fix things that aren't broken though, for example the
cursed little boxes in XP which tell you that the adjacent cell doesn't have
a formula in it. I bloody well know it doesn't, go away!
That's progress I suppose,
Thanks Again,
Alan.
"JLatham" <HelpFrom @ Jlathamsite.com.(removethis) wrote in message
...
I think Roger has given an honest assessment of it. I'll say this: if you
think they moved things around in Vista, wait until you see the Office
apps.
But as Roger said, 'get over it'. Eventually, be it tomorrow or years
from
now, you will eventually be using that interface. I've found that the
Help
is improved and asking how to do something that you were familiar with in
XP
or 2003 will result in good instructions for doing it in 2007. HELP
itself
is improved. Not perfect, but better than before

Roger's question/answer session was good: must have? not if what you have
now is doing the job you need and there is nothing specifically in 2007
that
would make your life incredibly simpler:
http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/ex...738731033.aspx look and see.

Nice to have: yes, you'll be ahead of others in the learning curve for it,
and you can even participate in these forums finding out how to make it do
what you need it to do and discuss problems/solutions with others pretty
much
at the same learning level of 2007 as yourself.

Will it get better: yes, I think we're going to see an SP1 (no, I don't
have
any inside info) that will take care of the complaints we've seen coming
from
specific areas such as macro recording and charting and probably others I
haven't heard about or noticed in these discussion forums.

If I personally have complaints about it, it is in the area of charting.
I'm very disappointed in the experience (I can do some charts 10x as fast
on
a single core, several year old CPU with half the memory on the system in
Excel 2003 than I can on a new Core2 E6600 system running Excel 2007).
But
in other areas, I really don't have any complaints of serious note at all.
They speak of improvements to pivot charts and you mentioned them- I
cannot
address that, as they are not something I use much at all. Conditional
formatting is much improved and should eventually do away with a lot of
the
"how do I get conditional formatting for more than 3 conditions" requests
we
see so often hear.




"Alan" wrote:

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.

Check Tools | Options | [Error Checking] tab for those annoying little cell
alerts - they are still in 2007 and it also has options to turn them on/off.
The one that's probably of most use is the "number stored as text or
preceeded w/apostrophe" -

As for filling up a single sheet - get ready to exercise your virtual memory
to the max! 64K * 1M = 64GBytes to store just a single character in each
cell. But I have seen people already who had use for the increased sheet
size in both dimensions, usually just one or the other. It's pretty obvious
at the moment that the intent was not that anyone would actually fill up an
entire sheet, but that there are cases where 256 columns or 64K rows is just
not enough. As for responsiveness with large volumes of data - depends on
what you're doing with it. One contact I have collects data from lab
equipment (spectrometers and such) and had need to import over 1/2-million
rows of data in 2 columns. 2007 handled the data import and store easily,
but we ran into performance problems when turning it into charts. The data
represented 51 test runs, so we were building 51 charts with 8800 data points
per X-Y Scatterchart. Excel 2007 struggled with that on 3 different machines
(his and 2 that I have with 2007 on them), but Excel 2003 tackled the problem
- splitting the data over 51 sheets - with no problems or performance hits.

"Alan" wrote:

Thanks to you too,
Good advice. As you say, if MS decide to change something then we have
little choice but to go along with it. Vista will be on almost all PC's in a
few years and XP and it's predecessors won't be supported so if you don't
like it, hard luck or MAC.
I still think that MS fix things that aren't broken though, for example the
cursed little boxes in XP which tell you that the adjacent cell doesn't have
a formula in it. I bloody well know it doesn't, go away!
That's progress I suppose,
Thanks Again,
Alan.
"JLatham" <HelpFrom @ Jlathamsite.com.(removethis) wrote in message
...
I think Roger has given an honest assessment of it. I'll say this: if you
think they moved things around in Vista, wait until you see the Office
apps.
But as Roger said, 'get over it'. Eventually, be it tomorrow or years
from
now, you will eventually be using that interface. I've found that the
Help
is improved and asking how to do something that you were familiar with in
XP
or 2003 will result in good instructions for doing it in 2007. HELP
itself
is improved. Not perfect, but better than before

Roger's question/answer session was good: must have? not if what you have
now is doing the job you need and there is nothing specifically in 2007
that
would make your life incredibly simpler:
http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/ex...738731033.aspx look and see.

Nice to have: yes, you'll be ahead of others in the learning curve for it,
and you can even participate in these forums finding out how to make it do
what you need it to do and discuss problems/solutions with others pretty
much
at the same learning level of 2007 as yourself.

Will it get better: yes, I think we're going to see an SP1 (no, I don't
have
any inside info) that will take care of the complaints we've seen coming
from
specific areas such as macro recording and charting and probably others I
haven't heard about or noticed in these discussion forums.

If I personally have complaints about it, it is in the area of charting.
I'm very disappointed in the experience (I can do some charts 10x as fast
on
a single core, several year old CPU with half the memory on the system in
Excel 2003 than I can on a new Core2 E6600 system running Excel 2007).
But
in other areas, I really don't have any complaints of serious note at all.
They speak of improvements to pivot charts and you mentioned them- I
cannot
address that, as they are not something I use much at all. Conditional
formatting is much improved and should eventually do away with a lot of
the
"how do I get conditional formatting for more than 3 conditions" requests
we
see so often hear.




"Alan" wrote:

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.