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Excel 2007 - Great Changes to An Old Favorite!
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Microsoft listened! In addition to the brand new look and feel common to most of the other Office 2007 applications, there are many great changes to Excel that were long overdue.

Excel has grown from a maximum of 256 columns and 65,536 rows to a whopping 16,385 columns and 1,048,576 rows available in each worksheet, the conditional formatting feature has been greatly improved, and would you believe you can now sort rows by color? These are just three of the “cool” new features!

Want more? Come see how Microsoft taught an old dog some new tricks!

Free Training Opportunities/Tutorials Available Online:

Top New Features

  • More rows and columns, and other new limits
    • Excel 2007 now has 1,048,576 rows by 16,384 columns in each spreadsheet
      • Columns now end at XFD instead of IV
    • Unlimited number of formats in the same workbook
    • The number of cell references per cell increased from 8 thousand to limited only by the available memory
    • Increased memory management from 1 GB to 2 GB for improved performance and faster calculations
    • Now supports up to 16 million colors
  • Office themes and Excel styles
    • Quickly format the data by applying a theme and by using a specific style. The same themes are available in Word and PowerPoint 2007 as well, while styles are designed to change the format of Excel-specific items, such as Excel tables, charts, PivotTables, shapes, or diagrams
    • Cell styles allow you to to quickly apply a predefined cell style to a cell or range of cells, and then quickly change the style of the cells
  • Improved conditional formatting - no longer limited to three conditions
    • Visually annotate data to easily find exceptions and spot important trends in your data,
    • You can implement and manage multiple conditional formatting rules using gradient colors, data bars, and icon sets to automatically format data that meets those rules
    • Conditional formats are easy to apply—in just a few clicks, you can see the relationships in your data
  • Enhanced formula writing features
    • Resizable formula bar to accommodate long, complex formulas - prevents formulas from covering other data in your worksheet.
    • Longer formulas with more levels of nesting are now possible
    • Function AutoComplete, helps you quickly write the proper formula syntax
  • Improved sorting and filtering
    • Sort data by color and by more than 3 (and up to 64) levels
    • Filter data by color or by dates, display more than 1000 items in the AutoFilter drop-down list, select multiple items to filter, and filter data in PivotTables
  • Excel table enhancements - formerly known as lists
    • Table header rows can be turned on or off. When table headers are displayed, they stay visible with the data in the table columns by replacing the worksheet headers when you move around in a long table
    • Calculated columns use a single formula that adjusts for each row and can automatically expand to include additional rows so that the formula is immediately extended to those rows. All that you have to do is enter a formula once—you don't need to use the Fill or Copy commands
    • AutoFilter is turned on by default in a table to enable powerful sorting and filtering of table data
    • Structured references allow you to use table column header names in formulas instead of cell references, such as A1 or R1C1
    • In a total row, you can now use custom formulas and text entries
    • Apply pre-designed table styles to data to quickly add designer-quality, professional formatting to tables
  • New and improved charting engine
    • New charting tools include special effects, such as 3-D, transparency, and soft shadows
    • New predefined chart styles and layouts
    • In a few clicks, you can add or remove titles, legends, data labels, trendlines, and other chart elements.
    • Lines in charts appear less jagged, and ClearType fonts are used for text to improve readability
    • More colors available
  • Shared charting
    • Word and PowerPoint now incorporate the powerful charting features of Excel
    • Shared charting provides the rich functionality of Excel, including the use of formulas, filtering, sorting, and the ability to link a chart to external data sources
    • The Excel worksheet that contains the data can be stored in your Word document or PowerPoint presentation, or in a separate file to reduce the size of your documents
    • Charts can be easily copied and pasted between documents or from one program to another
    • In PowerPoint, you can more easily use animation to emphasize data in an Excel-based chart. You can animate the entire chart or the legend entry and axis labels. In a column chart, you can even animate individual columns to better illustrate a specific point. Animation features are easier to find and you have a lot more control
  • Easy-to-use PivotTables
    • PivotTables are easier to use than in earlier versions of Excel—you no longer have to drag data to drop zones that aren't always an easy target. Instead, you can simply select the fields that you want to see from the new PivotTable field list
    • You can now undo most actions that you take to create or rearrange a PivotTable
    • Sorting is now as simple as selecting an item in the column that you want to sort and using sort buttons. You can filter data by using PivotTable filters, such as date filters, label filters, value filters, or manual filters
    • Conditional formatting can be applied to Pivot Tables by cell or by the intersection of cells
    • Quickly apply predefined or custom styles to a PivotTable
  • New file formats
    • The new XML-based file formats facilitate integration with external data sources, and also offer reduced file sizes and improved data recovery
    • You can check an Office Excel 2007 workbook to see if it contains features or formatting that are not compatible with an earlier version of Excel so that you can make the necessary changes for better backward compatibility. In earlier versions of Excel, you can install updates and converters that help you open an Office Excel 2007 workbook so that you can edit it, save it, and open it again in Office Excel 2007 without losing any Office Excel 2007-specific functionality or features.
  • New Page Layout View
    • Makes it easy to see what will be printed on every page as you change the layout options, which will help you avoid multiple printing attempts and truncated data in printouts
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Last Updated: September 23, 2015