Published Now and Again for Business Users of Microsoft Excel.    

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Introducing Office 2007
+ PDF Handbook for Office

Charley Kyd

Wednesday, April 12, 2006

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Introducing Excel 2007

If you would like to beta test Office 2007, you'll probably get your chance soon.

Microsoft now is accepting Beta 2 registrations. To register, go to Key Microsoft Web Sources Explain Office 2007 Features and then follow the link to the right of my byline.

People have tended to look at recent upgrades of Excel and asked, "So what's changed?" You definitely won't say that -- and mean it -- when you see this version of Excel. The changes have been massive, and obvious.

I can't talk yet about any of the changes to Excel based on my own knowledge or opinions. But the Web Sources article provides information about some of the many changes that Microsoft has brought to Excel. And the article offers links to the key Microsoft web pages where you can learn much more about Excel 2007.

I begin the article with a short discussion of Excel's user interface (UI). As you can see from the first figure in the article, the UI has changed completely. We no longer have menus. We have the Ribbon.

The Ribbon probably will become one of the most widely discussed changes to Excel. In fact, I've just noticed that already it's more widely discussed on the web than I ever would have guessed. To see what I mean, use Google to search for:
ribbon "excel 12" OR "excel 2007"

Today, I get 13,300 hits for this search. I wonder how soon that search string will return more than one million hits?
 

Make Your Local Excel Guru Scratch His Head

If you took a poll of your favorite Excel gurus, their favorite guru likely would be Bob Umlas.

Last year Bob wrote a little book titled, "This isn't Excel, it's Magic." In addition to useful tricks, this book describes some clever ones that are merely fun. Here's one you might pull on your local Excel guru:

In an empty spreadsheet, enter =NA() in cell D1. Copy the range D1:D2 to D3:D100, creating a column of alternating #N/A and blank cells.

Select all of column D. Press the F5 key to launch the Go to dialog. Choose Special. In the Go To Special dialog, click on Formulas then choose OK. After you do so, Excel will select every cell that contains =NA().

Change the font to 100. Press the Delete key to erase the =NA() formulas. Click and drag to set the column back to its original width. Choose Format, Row, Height to set the row height to 12.75.

Now look at your row number labels. You will see labels for only the even rows. The labels for your odd-numbered rows have disappeared. Now that is really odd.
 

Quick Way to Close Without Saving

Finally, here's a useful trick from Bob's book...

Suppose you're shutting down for the day and you want to close all your open files without saving any of them.

Hold down your Shift key then click on the X in the top-right corner of your screen to close Excel. Excel will ask if you want to save the first file. After you choose No -- with your Shift key still pressed -- Excel will close all your other files without asking, then shut down.

Or, suppose you want to close all your files without closing Excel.

Hold down your shift key and choose File. Because the Shift key is pressed you will see the Close All item in the File menu. If you continue to hold down the Shift key when you choose Close All, Excel will close all open files without asking whether you want them to be saved. If you release the Shift key before you choose Close All, Excel will ask whether to save each unsaved file.

Enough for now.