Excel 2007

Cool Features
I have been working with Excel and training users on excel for over eight years. I have been working with excel 2007 for over six months now and have found it to be completely different from the older versions. I find that this new version was harder for me to get used to when I used to know where ever little menu item was and each function and how to use them. They went and changed the entire menu and threw me for a loop. I would say now I am back to where I feel comfortable again with excel. I have found some really neat features in 2007.

Here are a few that I have found that I would believe would be useful in day to day activities when you are working with large amounts of records and data.

1. Remove Duplicates. I have longed for this feature to arrive and I probably use more than most. As it states it will remove duplicates from a range of cells and give you an overview of how many it removed and the remaining distinct values upon completion of the function.
to use this function, Choose a data range in your workbook, then click on the data menu, and then choose "Remove Duplicates" button.

2. PivotTables have changed but are still a valuable tool for any office that analyzes large data sets. The newest utility in this existing feature is the "Defer Updates" button. This is a great feature as it will allow you to play around with the formatting of the pivttable dragging and dropping fields to rows and columns without physically updating the pivottable after each change. This is especially useful if you are working with a lot of data. To use this feature create your pivottable on the fields menu on the bottom left you will see the "Defer Updates" option.

3. Row and column limitation. The angels have finally sung. The new row limitation is 1,048,576. Yes this is right over a million rows of data you can have now in your workbooks, you are no longer limited to creating external csv files and using data access queries to get around the 65k row limitation.
I absolutely love this feature. Always keep in mind though the number of rows and columns in your workbooks will always make them larger. If space is a critical issue, I would look at expanding your drives as the files are now able to get a lot larger.

Now I must mention a couple of things I do not like in excel 2007.

Charts - Converted charts from older workbooks seem to be a memory hog and they just do not seem to function properly or quickly.

I really am not impressed with the way they changed the data access connection menu. I think for the average user it just leads to more confusion then there once was. I would recommend only using this feature if you really are familar with Data access queries their abilities and limitations.

Lastly I am not a big fan of where they moved the excel options from the file menu tab to the windows menu. I find it a bit cumbersome to use and things like look at a files properties seems to be harder to get to then just going to File, properties. You can always find little workarounds to make your life easier as have I. I drag alot of the functions that I regularly use into my own little menu in my default workbook properties. I find this is easier for me to manuever around the new layout.

but then again I am a command line girl and like to keep things as simple as possible.

If you have any cool new "functions" or timbits you want me to include in one of my articles send me a comment.

If you are ever looking for excel help a good forum to check out is
http://www.dbforums.com/microsoft-excel/