WATCH THE VIDEOS AT THE BOTTOM OF THE PAGE
The new version of Excel poses some challenges for users. It's a very mixed bag as to people liking the new version and not liking it. As with everything in life or many things in life, there are pros and cons.
The Ribbon is the first new feature to manage, as most of your work will start from here. In general, the ribbon is a breakout of the menus and toolbars that exist in the 2003 and earlier versions. Each of the features that have been located on the 2003 menus or toolbars are now located in various places all over the ribbon within tabs and groups.
Please take a look at one of my videos below to get a good understanding of how this Ribbon is organized.
It's fairly logical in its design but it's often hard to find where things are. It's definitely a time on task adventure to learn it. You won't be able to learn it by osmosis or subliminal programs in your sleep. And some will like it more than others.
But once you do get the hang of the Ribbon and the other new features in the program, you'll most likely enjoy it as the graphics you can design with are far superior by leaps and bounds to earlier versions.
And if you're in a company that uses large databases, Excel has over a million rows and many thousands of columns for you to enter data. Definitely enough to list all of the Starbucks, Dunkin Donuts, McDonalds, Subway, Taco Bell, Hardees, Waffle House, Arbys, Wendys, KFC and Burger King menu items with room to spare.
And I actually eat quite a bit of organic food!
But Excel 2007 is pretty cool once you know it. Just check out the enhanced conditional formatting features. They're great. I'm using them a lot in my spreadsheets.
The Smart Art graphics are also terrific. You can get super creative if you so desire. For graphic designers and those who need to use graphics with their spreadsheets, you'll love this version.
For those who don't need any new features and are perfectly satisfied with the 2003 or earlier versions, you probably won't want to bother learning this version and may not get much value from using it.
I'd recommend downloading a free trial of one of the Office 2007 versions and using it for 2-3 months. From the date you download it, you get 2 months plus the remaining days in that 2nd month to use it for free. The trials last until the last day of the second month.
So enjoy learning and using Excel 2007 and as Obi-Wan Kenobi often said, "May the force be with you."
WATCH ONE OF THE EXCEL TRAINING VIDEOS BELOW
THERE ARE TWO DIFFERENT VERSIONS OF THE SAME VIDEO
(Full Screen or Closeup)
THE EXCEL 2007 RIBBON (Fullscreen)
THE EXCEL 2007 RIBBON (Closeup)
