| As a PC user for over twenty years now, I | | | | styles, due to the extra effort to find and use |
| started with a monochrome screen, DOS, and | | | | the styles in prior versions, and the relatively |
| Lotus 123 as the major spreadsheet program of | | | | limited amount of formatting usually done in a |
| the day. Some of you go that far back too. As | | | | worksheet. In Excel 2007, a style gallery in the |
| good as Lotus 123 was, I was very impressed | | | | ribbon under the home tab conveniently displays |
| the first time I used Excel in 1989. I remember | | | | several styles, allowing for quick formatting |
| the main advantage at that time was its' | | | | choices for background color, font, font color, |
| WYSIWYG interface and more flexible charting. | | | | number format, and borders. Simply highlight the |
| Later on in version 5, I discovered multiple | | | | cells you want to change and pick your style. One |
| worksheets (now taken for granted), over 16,000 | | | | last detail to mention is that there are now |
| rows and some nice analysis tools such as | | | | themes in Microsoft Office 2007, which are like |
| three-level sorting, auto-filter and the very capable | | | | styles, but more global in their result, changing an |
| pivot table. | | | | entire file's, fonts, colors, line and fill effects. Once |
| This latest version of Excel is still very impressive, | | | | a theme is defined in any Microsoft Office 2007 |
| building on many of these same features. One of | | | | application, it is available in the others too. |
| the first things you notice is that Excel 2007 now | | | | Conditional formatting has been a part of Excel's |
| offers 1,048,576 rows and 16,384 columns and | | | | feature set for years. It is commonly used for |
| 2GB memory management (vs. 65,536 rows, 256 | | | | highlighting cells that meet certain criteria, such as |
| columns and 1GB). Because of this, cell addresses | | | | changing a cell color to red if the entry was less |
| can have three letters representing the column | | | | than a specific amount. This is still part of Excel |
| (up to XFD instead of IV). The old worksheet had | | | | 2007, but it has now been enhanced to format an |
| 16,777,216 cells. An Excel 2007 worksheet has | | | | entire range of cells at once, changing the cell |
| 17,179,869,184 cells (1,024 times as many). Along | | | | background by color and shade, in order to |
| with this greater capacity is a new file format | | | | differentiate the values visually for easier analysis. |
| (*.xlsx) using XML, which allows for reduced file | | | | Much like a weather map showing severe |
| size. On one workbook I use, the size was | | | | weather gradations, you can set choose a |
| reduced from 463K (saved as xls) to 267K | | | | conditional format color scale to shade the smaller |
| (saved as xlsx), over a 40% reduction by | | | | numbers in blue and the larger ones deep orange. |
| switching to the new format. | | | | Not only can you do this differentiation with color |
| Formatting is much improved in Excel 2007. Excel | | | | scales, but also shading of a portion of the cell |
| always had styles, which is a feature more | | | | with the data bars feature, the larger the portion |
| commonly used in Word or PowerPoint. It allows | | | | shaded, the larger the number relative to the |
| for a conglomeration of format settings to be | | | | others in the selection, much like applying a bar |
| saved and re-used under a unique name. For | | | | chart directly in the cell. Finally, for a little fun, |
| instance, in this Word document, the main | | | | there are a large assortment of icons that can be |
| paragraphs use the 'normal' style. The heading at | | | | used to quickly show the relative size of entries in |
| the top uses the 'Heading 1' style which has a | | | | a range, including stop lights, flags, arrows and |
| larger font and is bold. In Excel, I rarely used | | | | even cell-phone-like reception strength bars. |