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Here’s a 1st Look at Office and Excel 2007

By Rotary eClub One Member, Alan Salmon

Office 2007's new interface and file formats are both good news and bad news

A brand new interface and new XML file formats dramatically changes Microsoft Office 2007. Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Access, and Outlook have a startling new interface. All five applications replace most drop-down menus and toolbars with a context-sensitive "ribbon," an interactive strip across the top of the screen that displays the various functions relevant to the currently selected tab. (Outlook retains the previous interface in windows other than those used to compose e-mail, however.)

Everyone is going to be initially confused by the relocation of their favorite features, but with some training they'll be won over by how easy the ribbon makes accessing needed functions. Likewise, they'll be wowed by the live preview function, which lets them see in advance how their document will look when they hover the cursor over any of the ribbon's design elements, such as fonts in Word or charts in Excel.

The ribbon's fast access to features provides a more cramped work area. You can't resize the ribbon, although it disappears when you shrink the window beyond a preset size or go full screen. Anyone working on a screen measuring 17 inches or smaller will need a monitor upgrade. Office 2007 offers no legacy interface option, a decision that will likely irritate those who have grown accustomed to Office's old face.

There are neat new touches in Excel 2007. The common task of entering formulas is improved via the new Formulae AutoComplete. When you type =a into a cell, for example, you see a drop-down list of every function that starts with the letter a. Type v after the a, and the list shrinks to all functions beginning with that combination of letters. This is a real time-saver.

The new forecasting and analysis features in Excel let you easily spot trends in your worksheets and catch warning signs hidden in your data. Changes to Conditional Formatting let you set a range of values so that the highest is red, the lowest is blue, and those in between are graded hues between those two extremes. You can also use data bars and icon sets to improve your view of the data.

A completely redesigned Office Excel 2007 charting engine helps you share your analysis in professional-looking charts. You create and interact with charts the same way, regardless of the application you are using, because the Office Excel 2007 charting engine is consistent in Microsoft Office Word 2007 and Microsoft Office PowerPoint 2007.

It is now much easier to create, format, expand, and refer to tables because Office Excel 2007 has greatly improved support for tables. When analyzing data contained in a large table the table headings remain in view while you scroll.

Pivot Tables have always been a powerful but seldom used analysis tool in Excel. They get even better in the new version. PivotTable views allow you to quickly reorient your data to help you answer multiple questions.

By applying enhanced conditional formatting you can easily see important trends and find exceptions in your data. This will allow you to discover patterns and highlight trends in your data using rich visualization schemes like gradients, thresholds, and performance indicator icons.

Word 2007 adds a great multipane view that makes comparing different versions of the same document easy. For example, you can simultaneously view the original version, the edited file, and a version that combines both and shows the revisions. When you scroll through one of the three panes, you scroll through the other two at the same time. You can even open another pane on the left side of the screen that lists only the revisions--oddly, however, this one doesn't scroll along with the others.

In Word 2007 and in the other Office 2007 applications, the new user interface lets you preview styles before committing them to the underlying text. As with Word 2003, you select some text. But now, instead of diving into drop-down menus, you mouse over the Styles Gallery and see how each style affects the selected text: It changes on the fly. If you don't select anything, the text returns to its previous state. To apply a style, simply click it and its done.

This process works for fonts, colors, margins, table formatting, and various other Word features. And if you have specific formatting needs, you can even make your own Quick Styles which, yes, can be added to the gallery and added just as easily when needed.

The switch to XML file formats in Word, Excel, and PowerPoint will be an issue for many. Office 2007 applications can open and work on files created in previous releases back to Office 97, and you can create files in all existing Office formats. However, to take full advantage of the smaller file sizes and other benefits of Office 2007, you must use its new XML formats: .docx in Word, .xlsx in Excel, and .pptx in PowerPoint. In fact, saving files in older Office formats isn't possible in the 'Save as' dialog box; instead, you must choose Convert from the new Office button, and Convert appears on the resulting drop-down menu only when a non-XML file is open. When you try to open an Office 2007 file in an earlier version of an Office app you will be prompted to download a compatibility pack from Microsoft. This pack will not be available until Office 2007 ships next year.

Microsoft is not kidding when it says that the next version of Office is the most important revision in over a decade. The XML-based default file formats and a major interface revamp make Office 2007 more flexible and accessible than ever. Once you learn how to use it you will find the new features to be both intriguing and highly valuable. It will be in general distribution on January 30th, 2007.

Editor’s footnote: The foregoing article reflects the views of the author. Rotary eClub One assumes no responsibility whatsoever for the author’s comments and recommendations. The computer user must assume the entire risk of using the software.  Good data processing procedure dictates that any software be thoroughly tested with non-critical data before relying on it.

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