Office 2007 changes the look and feel of Excel

What can you do to change a spreadsheet? You have cells with numbers or words. If the cells have numbers, you can sum them. If they have dates, you can calculate the number of days between two dates. You can calculate percentages, internal rates of return, gross profits. You can use the spreadsheet for flat files such as an address book. Those are the kinds of things that made Visicalc popular on early Apple computers in the 1970s. It's what Excel 2007 does today. What's the big deal? Well, as it turns out, so much is new that it's hard to decide where to start. I've said that before about Office 2007 applications. I'll start with a little show-and-tell about Excel.

	• CLICK THE IMAGES FOR A LARGER VIEW. I'm going to start with what a Microsoft hater (and I know a few of those) would show first and say Look! Microsoft applications are just plain buggy! I'm not a Microsoft hater, but I'm also not a Microsoft apologist. What interested me was finding the cause of this "insufficient resources" message.
	No clues here, but Excel had been open for only a few minutes and I was certain that this couldn't be a memory leak in Excel. What else was open?
	Here's the answer. Firefox version 2 apparently has a fairly nasty memory leak. Dreamweaver often tells me that it doesn't have sufficient resources to show graphics when Firefox has been running for a while.      • Firefox is using 184MB of RAM.      • Dreamweaver is using 95MB of RAM.      • By contrast, Excel is using 48MB of RAM. Clearly the problem was not with Excel. After closing Firefox and Dreamweaver, I never saw the error again. Lesson? Yes, there is one. When you hear anyone spewing nonsense about an application or a company, get the facts and then make an informed decision.
	Excel 2007 is certainly far more attractive, more pleasing to look at, than Excel 2003 or any earlier version. Being attractive isn't enough, though; functionality is essential and Excel comes through there, too. You'll see that I have a number (12.5) selected and I'm looking at numeric formats I could apply to the number. Below the format name, Excel shows me exactly what the number will look like if I select that format.
	To veer totally away from the discussion at hand, here's a change I recommend to Excel's settings. Most people I know use only 1 worksheet per workbook and the application defaults to creating 3. It's easy enough to add sheets when you need them, so I set the default to 1.
	This could be considered misuse of a spreadsheet, but I use Excel to track upcoming program topics and how far along the production is. Blank means nothing has been done yet and 9 indicates completion. I used conditional formatting so that Excel will change the cell background color as the numbers change.
	Here's an example of a small change that makes a big difference. The tips that pop up when the mouse is hovered over an icon are large, readable, and out of the way. In the past, these tips often were hard to read or obscured what you were working on. Below and to the left, you'll see that conditional formatting now has far more options, both in terms of telling the application how to apply the colors and in terms of how many colors can be applied. Here I'm using 4 rules (3 colors because a blank cell or any cell with a number lower than 4 should be red). The previous limit was 3.
	And here's a bit of clever intelligence. You'll note that I have a limited number of cells selected (the dark outline) but that Excel knows the custom formatting goes all the way down to cell 109. It's easy to select too few cells, apply formatting, and then realize that you should have applied it to the rest of the original range. This is an example of the system doing what you wanted, not what you told it to do.
	If you used the Work menu in Word 2003 to keep track of documents you use frequently, you'll wonder where it went in Word 2007. The good news is that the feature is now a "pin" function (click the push-pin icon and the item will stay on the menu). The better news is that the function works across all Office applications. That's why I mentioned Word in an article about Excel.
	Here's another example of highly readable pop-up messages. In this case, it shows the key word for a function, an example of how the function needs to be formatted, and and explanation of what the function does. Oh ... and by the way, if you need more information, press F1.
	In the upper left corner, Excel presents a tiny icon that holds many powerful functions.
	Here are the "popular" settings—the ones most people will use most frequently. This is clearly the evolution of the custom menus option, which I despised in the 2003 version of the applications. This time they got it right.
	The advanced options (this is where power users will make changes) has a lot of settings. Take a look at how far the scroll bar has to travel!
	When you choose command types to work with from the drop-down menu, Excel will display the appropriate menu items in the left column. You may then add the commands to any toolbar. The change can affect just the current document or all documents.
	Excel comes with a lot of add-ins already installed if you choose the full installation. Disk drives are large enough these days, that the full installation seems to make sense. Here you can add others or control ones that are already installed. Add-ins can affect all documents or just the current document.
	The Trust Center is the area where you control security, access, and privacy settings.
	When it comes to providing help, the Office 2007 applications are far ahead of previous versions. Excel offers a variety of on-line resources in addition to the on-line help.
	On-line help connects to Microsoft if you happen to be on-line or examines local help files if you're off-line. The switch happens much faster than in Office 2003. But where's Clippy?
	I didn't like the paper clip. Neither did just about anyone else. But Office 2003 allowed me to select an office assistant that was a cat. I rather liked the cat and now he's gone. But that's OK. As the on-line help points out, "The online Help feature in the 2007 Microsoft Office system has been completely redesigned, and the new design does not include the Microsoft Office Assistant. Find links to more information about how to quickly get the help you need in the See Also section."
	I mentioned earlier that adding extra sheets to the workbook is easier than before. A single click will do it.
	Notice two items here: The 3 view options on the left and the zoom tool on the right. I'm about to click the Page Break Preview.
	The Page Break Preview allows me to see exactly where the page breaks will be and to change them without having to go back to the page layout dialog box.
	All I have to do is grab the page break (blue line) and drag it to the right. Now all of the columns will print on a single page. This might be another one of those small features that makes a big difference.
	Here's what the zoom function does. Here I've zoomed all the way out ...
	... and here I've zoomed in as far as I can. This is an impressive range for a spreadsheet application!

OK, so it's pretty, but does it work?

Here are some key differences between Excel 2003 and Excel 2007. Numbers don't tell the entire story, but they do tell part of the story. If you've used Excel to import large data files with more than 256 fields, you know that data will be lost. With Excel 2007, a data file may have up to 16,384 fields. That's 64 times larger. Instead of 3 sorting levels, you now have 64. In Excel 2003, the Find All function could find 65,472 instances of a term; that limit is now 2 billion. And if you've been caught by size limitations when you try to use a pivot table, check out the numbers below.

Views: In addition to the standard view, you can work in Page Layout or Page Break view. In Page Layout, you can edit the headers and footers directly rather than as part of a setup pane.

Formula Bar: The formula bar now resizes so that it doesn't infringe on the top cells of the spreadsheet.

Status Bar: The status bar has added statistical information (average, count, and sum) about the currently-selected cells.

Tables: Tables are much easier to set up and modify. Right-clicking inside a table and selecting Create Table causes Excel 2007 to label columns, create AutoFilters, and display applicable tools. To test-drive other formats, you can hover the mouse over formats shown in the Table Gallery to see a live preview. Some of the formats include alternating colors for rows and now if you delete a row, it is no longer necessary to manually re-apply colors. Excel 2007 maintains the pattern.

PDF Export: Excel 2007 can export sheets as PDF, so many users no longer need a PDF writer. (If you need the full functions of Adobe Acrobat, you'll still need Acrobat; if you just need to create a PDF for distribution, Excel has everything you need.) The PDF option isn't installed by default and isn't even on the DVD that Office 2007 is delivered on. If you want this option, you'll need to visit Microsoft's website and download installation files. The download is a little under 1MB and it allows you to export files to PDF and XPS formats in eight 2007 Microsoft Office programs. It also allows you to send as e-mail attachment in those formats from some Office 2007 applications.

Excel 2007 puts the features you need at your fingertips.

I'm far more comfortable working with a word processor, an image editor, a sound editor, or a publishing and layout application, but Excel makes me almost wish I had more reasons to "run the numbers". Those who do work with spreadsheets will find a lot to like in this new version.

For more information, visit the Microsoft Excel website.

Archiving old applications

I'm a pack rat. I keep old applications. I even have a copy of Microsoft Bob somewhere. Why? I certainly don't plan to re-install Bob anytime soon, but throwing it away would be like discarding an artifact from the Pleistocene epoch. In computer terms, 1995 is about as distant from today as is the Pleistocene epoch, about 1.8 million years ago. Microsoft Bob was intended to be a user-friendly interface to replace the Program Manager. It was a project managed by Melinda French, who later became Melinda Gates. Although Bob was a failure, some of Bob's components were later added to the Windows interface. So I can't just drop Bob into the trash.

But I can't very well keep Bob in the same filing system as active applications. Recently when I reviewed what's on file, I found literally hundreds of CDs that hold applications I'll probably never use again, either because I tried them and didn't care for them or because they're earlier versions of an application that I still use. Either way, they shouldn't be in the "active" file.

This is not my photo and I don't know who took it, but I like it a lot. It may have something to do with this report, but I doubt it.

So I started writing these CDs off to a directory called "Old Applications" and, when I was finished doing that, I burned DVDs from the Old Applications directory. A total of 15 DVDs containing antique, obsolete, or unloved applications. Some of these applications were on 3.5" floppy disks. I had to buy a USB floppy drive to retrieve them. And I still have 2 boxes with (mainly DOS) applications on 5.25" floppies. I don't want to just pitch these, but there is no computer available to me with a floppy drive that can read these and I really can't justify buying a 5.25" floppy drive.

What's in there? Well, without saying which programs are unloved and which have merely been replaced by later versions, here's a partial list: 3D Album, ABC FlowCharter 4, Abracadata Landscape, ACD See 5, ACT 2000, Act 6, Adobe Acrobat 3.01, Adobe Acrobat 4, Adobe Acrobat 6, Adobe FrameMaker 5, Adobe FrameMaker 5.5, Adobe Frutiger, Adobe GoLive 4, Adobe Illustrator 10, Adobe Illustrator 9, Adobe InDesign 2, Adobe PageMaker 6.5, Adobe Photoshop 7, Adobe Photoshop Elements 2, After Dark, Alien Skin Image Doctor, Amorphium Pro, Backup My PC, Basic Algebra, Bryce 2, Bryce 5, By Design, Canvas 7, Canvas 8, Career IQ Test, Catz, CD Anywhere, CityROM NYC, Clarion 5, Clip Words, Colorworks Web, Computer Desktop Encyclopedia, Conversions Plus 6, Copy Commander, Corel Draw 10, Corel Draw 8, Corel Graphics Suite 11, Corel KnockOut 1.5, Corel Mega Gallery, Cursor Power, Desktop Author, Desktop Surveillance 97, Desktop X, Diamond Cut 32, Documents to Go 4, Documents to Go 5, DOS Applications, Dragon Naturally Speaking 3, Easy CD Creator 4, Enhance CD-R, Eudora 5, Family Fun, File Maker Pro 5.5, FileMaker Pro, Flash MX Application Development, Flight Simulator 1998, Flix Mix Grid Riddlers, FlixMix 1.5, Front Page 2002, Fury, Genuine Fractals Print Pro 1, GoldMine for Windows 95, HP Journada, HP Palmtop, Icon Tamer, Idea Fisher, Idea Fisher Speech & Presentations, Internet Cleanup, Jasc Media Center Plus, Kai's Power Goo, Kantronics Host Master, Letterperfect 1990, Linux Shell Programming, Mac Opener 2000, Macromedia Authorware 7, Macromedia Contribute, Macromedia Director 6.x, Macromedia Solutions Kit, Macromedia Studio 4, Macromedia Studio MX Plus, Masterclips, Merriam Webster Collegiate 2000, Microsoft Office 2000 Premium, Microsoft Publisher 97, MS DOS 6.2, Naturally Speaking 6, Nero 5.5, Net Objects Fusion, News Monger, Norton Internet Security 2002, Office XP, Office XP SP1, OmniPage Pro 11, OmniPage Pro 7, Paint Shop Photo Album 4, Paint Shop Pro 8, Painter 7, Partition Magic 5, PC Anywhere, Personality Test, PhotoSuite 4, PHP3 Programming, Picture Window Pro 2.5, Pinnacle Instant CD DVD, PK Zip 2.5, Power On utilities, Quark Xpress 5, Quark Xpress 6, Quick Books 2002, Quicken 2003, Random House Dictionary-DOS, RayDream Studio, Record Now Max, Retrospect, Return to Zork, Russian-Grammar Pro, Russian-Master and Margarita, Russian-Russian Now, Russian-Word Ace, Sharp Organizer, Smart Suite, Smartlist to Go, SnagIt 5, Snappy 4, Sound Forge 4.5, Speed, Spell Catcher Plus, Stuffit Deluxe Win, System Commander, TalkWorks Pro 2, The Road Ahead, Thumbs Plus 5, Timeslips 11, Turbo Tax 2001, Turbo Tax 2002, TurboPascal for Windows 1.5, Unix Shell Programming, Ventura Publisher 10, Ventura Publisher 8, Videotrope 1.0, Virtual Drive 6, Virtual PC for Windows, Visio 4, Visio 5, Visual Studio 6 Enterprise CDS 1-4 & DevNet, Visual Studio 6 Enterprise Service Packs, WebFerretPro, Wildcat 5 Navigator, Win Edit, WinBatch, WinBatch 2002, WinBatch 99A, Windows CE, Windows CE 2.0, Windows Commander, Windows XP SP1, WinZip 9, WordPerfect Executive, Wordperfect Office, WordPerfect Office 11, WordPerfect Office 2000, WordPerfect Office 2002, WritePro, WS-FTP, Xaos Tools, Xara MenuMaker, Xara Webstyle 3.1, Xara X, and Young Math.

The advantage of this approach is that the applications are available should I ever need to load one so that I can compare it with a later version, but the CDs aren't taking up valuable space in my filing system.

At about the same time, I decided that I should do something similar with images that I've accumulated over the years from digital cameras. These images date back to 1998 and I'd be more than a little annoyed if they were lost. They're backed up, of course, but the cost of a few DVDs and a bit of my time seemed a reasonable price to pay for additional security.

In the early days, I was mainly using borrowed cameras and the image sizes were relatively small. Sony loaned me a camera that made 64KB images. When Olympus loaned me a camera, 350KB seemed mighty large and the 850K Nikon images were enormous. But today I often shoot in "raw" mode, meaning each file is 8 to 12 megabytes. And if I shoot JPG format, they're still 2.5 to 3 MB each. These images fill a CD or a DVD quickly.

The first DVD, for example, covered a period from the beginning of recorded time until mid 2002. The 4th DVD holds photos from July 2003 until February 2004. DVD 9 contains photos from October through December of 2006, and DVD 11 has photos from April 2007. Still, the cost of a dozen DVDs (about $6) and my time (a few hours on a Sunday afternoon) seem reasonable for the additional protection I gain by ensuring that these images are doubly backed up.

Reports of the death of Net Radio are exaggerated

People who run Internet "radio stations" that play music thought that this weekend would be their last, but that's not going to be the case. Sound Exchange has agreed to continue negotiating with those who operate these streaming music services. Many of the "stations" have just a few hundred listeners, yet Sound Exchange wanted a minimum of $6000 per year from them. If you're playing music as a hobby for a few hundred people, should you be subject to an annual fee starting at $6000?

SaveNetRadio quoted Tim Westergreen, founder of Pandora, a service that I've talked about here: "It was getting pretty close,"Westergreen said. "I always had underlying optimism that sanity was going to prevail, but I was beginning to wonder."

Congress and SoundExchange have heard loud and clear the amazing outpouring of support for Internet radio from webcasters, is how SaveNetRadio put it. SoundExchange has now made a commitment to negotiate reasonable royalties, "recognizing the industry’s long-term value and its still-developing revenue potential."

During negotiations SoundExchange committed temporarily not to enforce the new royalty rates so webcasters can stay online as negotiators work to develop acceptable rates.

Retroactive royalty payments starting in January 2006 would be $.000762 times the number of songs played per listener. That sounds almost reasonable until you add the $6,000 per-channel-per-year payment. Operations such as Pandora that offer personalized streams for each listener would be killed instantly. By 2010, the per-listener rates would rise to $0.0019 per song.

Congress is considering the Internet Radio Equality Act that provides royalty payments be determined as a percentage such as that used by satellite and cable broadcasters—7.5% of revenue. Those stations that produce negligible revenues could escape payments altogether. Will the RIAA go for that?

Doubtful.

Nerdly News

Who would believe this? Sadly, somebody probably did.

Most of the fake fraud alert messages I've seen recently are better than those sent in the past, but one that arrived this week might as well have come with flashing red lights, a siren, and a loudspeaker announcing "This is a fake and if you click the link you will be sorry!" I clicked a quick screen shot of it before deleting it. Then I started marking the errors. The writer would earn an F-minus in 7th grade English class. It's really that bad and I didn't even mark all of the errors.

	• CLICK THE IMAGES FOR A LARGER VIEW. Here's a message that purports to be from the Bank of America. The marks I've added indicate grammar, spelling, punctuation, and capitalization errors that banks simply don't make.
	When I hovered the mouse over the link, here's what it showed me. You might mistake the "bankofamerica.com" directory for the domain.
You are receiving this message, due to you protection, Our Online Technical Security Service Foreign IP Spy recently detected that your online account was recently logged on from am 53.17.38.161 without am International Access Code (I.A.C) and from an unregistered computer, which was not verified by the Our Online Service Department.	Almost immediately we have the illiterate "due to you protection," which is followed by strange capitalization, and then by "am" in place of "IP" and "am" in place of "an". There's a missing period in the abbreviation for "International Access Code" (whatever that is and why is it capitalized?) There's a reference to "the our online service department" and that sections contains More Odd Capitalization and a comma splice. The message was sent to an address I never use for banking, too.
If you last logged in you online account on Tuesday July 10th 2007, by the time 5:42 am from an Foreign Ip their is no need for you to panic, but if you did log in your account on the above Date and Time, kindly take 2-3 minute of your online banking experince to verify and register your computer now to avoid identity theft, your protection is our future medal.	No native English speaker would say "If you last logged in you online account" and in this paragraph it's "Ip" instead of "IP" (or "am"). The message mentions a time, but not a time zone, so the information is useless. There's more odd capitalization, strange syntax, the mistaken use of "their" for "there", and the paragraph closes with "your protection is our future medal." In other words, the clues are numerous and overwhelming that this is not a legitimate message from the Bank of America (with which I don't do business anyway.)

The domain involved probably belongs to some poor shmo who doesn't even know it's been taken over. By the time I got around to sniffing around the domain, the rogue code had been removed.

A very merry un-launch-day to you

Remember Alice in Wonderland? At one point, Alice came upon the Mad Hatter, the March Hare, and a door mouse. They were celebrating unbirthdays. "A very merry unbirthday to you, to you / A very merry unbirthday to you, to you / It's great to drink to someone / And I guess that you will do / A very merry unbirthday to you!" For Microsoft 2007 will be the year of the un-lauch of Windows Server 2008. So it's a good thing that they elected to use the number 2008 instead of 2007 in the product's name. They might make it by the end of next year.

This week Microsoft announced that it will launch Windows Server 2008, SQL Server 2008, and Visual Studio 2008 on February 27, 2008. This isn't a "delay", of course; the product has 2008 in its name and February 28 is early in the year, only 2/3rds of the way through the first quarter. But Microsoft had hoped to have the applications available for customers before the end of the year.

Now it looks like the best they'll be able to do is release the code to manufacturing before the end of the year.

When Windows Server 2008 is available, corporate buyers will probably begin to think more seriously about deploying Vista. Although some companies are moving to Vista slowly as they replace aging computers, there has been no headlong rush to the new operating system.

This is the only ad you'll ever see on this site. It's for my website host, BlueHost in Orem, Utah. Over the past several years, they have proven to be honest, reliable, and progressive. If you need to host a website, please click the banner below to see what BlueHost has to offer.

TechByter Worldwide receives a small advertising payment for each new client that signs up with BlueHost but I would make the same recommendation even if the affiliate program didn't exist. (If you don't see a banner ad above and you would like to know more, this link takes you to BlueHost.)