1.1 Million Rows - A Discussion About Excel 12

[MrExcel]

There have been four instances where Microsoft has shown Office 12 to the public. Some high-level customers went out to Redmond in August. They showed it at the Professional Developers Conference in September. They showed it at the Publishers Summit in late September, and then again at the MVP Summit in late September. To get in, you had to sign an NDA saying that you wouldn't discuss what you saw. However, some facts about Office 12 have been made public on various Microsoft websites, so I feel pretty safe in talking about these items. (After I wrote this, I went back and noted the public source where someone from Microsoft talked about the feature to make sure I am not treading anywhere that I shouldn't).

1) This is the most substantial new release of Excel since '95 or '97. (Source: my opinion).

2) The grid is expanding to 2^20 rows and 10,000+ columns. The final column is column XFD. The final row is around 1.1 million. (Source: Dave Gainer Weblog)

3) Charting has been completely rewritten. There are not new chart types, but the look and feel of the charts is light-years ahead of the current charts. (Source: Julie Larsen-Green Video on Channel 9)

4) You can now natively create PDF files from all Office applications. (Source: Steve Sinofsky released us from NDA for this one fact and said we could tell about this)

5) Pivot Tables and conditional formatting have been made easier. Conditional Formatting is incredibly powerful now - you can easily create visual views of your data. (Source: Julie Larsen-Green Video). I *love* the Data Bar view as shown here in Dave Gainer's Blog

6) Keyboard-centric people will love that every single option available in the program will now be keyboard accessible. Not half, not most , but every single option. I love the keyboard, I love memorizing keyboard shortcuts for the common things (I even think, Alt-EIJ when I need to edit-fill-justify. It is hard for me not to say, "just Alt-EIJ that range"). And yes - there is a classic mode for people who know the old shortcuts. (Source: Jensen Harris blog)

7) Mouse-centric people will love that a new floating toolbar appears with the stuff usually in the right-click menu. It is the same sort of semi-transparent thing that Outlook 2003 shows when a new e-mail arrives. If you move the mouse towards the toolbar, it becomes solid, otherwise it fades away. I can see that this will be a huge timesaver - all of the good options just a few pixels from the current cell. (Julie Larsen Green Video)

8) They have completely re-thought menus and toolbars. Word 1.0 offered 20 commands. Excel 2003 has 350 commands. There is no way to effectively layer 350 commands on 9 menu options - people can not find what they are looking for. The new user interface is called "The Ribbon". It is context-sensitive like the current right-click menus. Instead of tiny toolbar icons, it has big buttons and words. The most powerful things are very evident in The Ribbon. For a lot of people blogging about the release, they all seem to have heartburn that there is not a "classic" view that will bring back the old menu system. I initially thought this was insane. However, after seeing it first-hand for a couple of days, I really think that this is a vast improvement. I think this is a small hurdle, it will annoy me for 2 days, but once I get past it, then I have the full power of 1.1 million rows and more power to analyze data with Excel. (Source: Jensen Harris blog)

9) In the MVP Excel breakout session, they showed some other features that have not been shown elsewhere. There are some gems in here, just in case #2, #3, #4, and #5 weren't enough. As soon as Dave Gainer talks about them, I will bring them up.

My take... a lot of people are still using Excel 97 or Excel 2000 and this is fine because Microsoft had not added much new stuff since Excel 97. It made it great as an author, because a screen shot from Excel 2003 looked almost like the screen shot from Excel 97 - you could write about seven years of Office releases with one book.

However, I think that this version has so much good stuff - it will be very very compelling for people to upgrade. I was talking with a casual Excel user last night, and just that day, he had been burned by the 65,536 row limit. Other people want more than 3 conditional formatting. It will be easier for regular people to find the powerful features that are currently buried.

The "gotcha" that I can see - upgrading needs to be an all-or-nothing thing for a company. If you have Excel 12 and have 350,000 rows of data and some of your co-workers are still on Excel 2000 - you won't be able to share that data.

Anyway - I've started this post for us to discuss the changes. If you hear of a new feature, feel free to post about it here.

Bill

 

[Sloveni4n]

Looks great. MUST HAVE!! Thanks for the post.

 

[pfarmer]

I'm wondering if, given today's economy, how many large corporations are going to be willing to update across the board in order to take advantage of O12's capabilities?

A good question. IT recently upgraded my 6 gb hd with a 10gb hd, so I think I know a local answer to that question.

Perry

 

[Smitty]

IT recently upgraded my 6 gb hd with a 10gb hd, so I think I know a local aswer to that question.

I didn't think they were that small anymore! My IS Dept wants to upgrade me to a 150Gb from 75.

Smitty

 

[pfarmer]

IT recently upgraded my 6 gb hd with a 10gb hd, so I think I know a local aswer to that question.

I didn't think they were that small anymore! My IS Dept wants to upgrade me to a 150Gb from 75.

Smitty

What I found funny is that it looked like a brand new drive.

Perry

 

[gwkenny]

I'm wondering if, given today's economy, how many large corporations are going to be willing to update across the board in order to take advantage of O12's capabilities?

I expect it would be par for the course. Meaning zero to not very many at all unless they already have special relationships with Microsoft.

Even in good times large companies will balk at the cost of upgrading software. Microsoft's price tag isn't a small chunk of change.

Given the expanded spreadsheet size and Microsoft's past history of effective memory management, this office version will almost definitely require more memory and maybe CPU speed than what will be on the average office PC in large organizations.

In my experience it's usually several years before large organizations rollout releases:

1) Wait for Microsoft to iron out the major bugs that might (will) pop up
2) After a couple of years have passed, the % of PC's in the organization that can physically run the release to be rolled is a lot higher (when compared to a few years before when the release to be rolled out was issued by the software developer) and fewer upgrades are needed.
3) Takes awhile to test in-house applications for compatibility testing
4) Takes awhile for in-house IT to demonstrate the value added of upgrading and then for management to buy into the argument to shell out the dough.

Consultants can make lots of money in steps 3 and 4

I think Microsoft got into a rut with their previous Office versions, from 95 to 2003. They're all pretty much the same with (imo) two major exceptions, 1) the look/graphics are different/improved, and 2) more options were available in each subsequent version.

I disagree. I think there was a lot of change on the front end between 95 and Office 2000.

There was a ton of change on the back end. Especially functionality.

Coding - Having coded from Wordbasic and VBA across the versions I noticed the huge increase in the object models as well as consolidation across the applications so the same object tends to behave the same (though this is far from perfect at the moment).

Administration - There's an incredible amount of change in remote monitering, installation, and maintainence of office installed on desktops for large organizations from versions 95 to 2003. You can cut IT support headcount significantly between the two versions.

COMPETITION

Microsoft has a huge leg up as it can code from the start to have it's Office Applications work hand in hand with the operating system.

It would be interesting to see what inroads (if any) could the competition make.

Think it will also be interesting to see what the effect of enterprise software being easier to use and design have on large organizations.

 

[hummelc]

Just Jon - you got it!

I can not see my or any corporation to globally change Excel accross the whole company. The cost is too high, unless MS will lower their licence fees considerably (which I doubt).

Corproations are cost sensitive adn again only a few power users will enjoy the new Excel, with the otehr being bought on-line over time or as needed. This could take 3 years at least. :wink:

 

[Zack Barresse]

I think it'll take a lot longer than 3 years. Lots. I'd venture a decade.

gwkenny: I agree with you. Maybe I came across wrong. My main point is that I think O12 will be so much more advanced beyond the current version than any of the previous versions have ever been. Sure there have been advances, yes the Object Model has grown, along with the functions bank and dozens of other little features. But this change is so much greater than anything we've ever seen.

 

[Pearso]

A question that i have about Excel12 is that will the VBA editor etc. change. I've just started writing macros in Excel11 and i don't really want to start from scratch again. I'm guessing due the limited release of information that i may have to wait and see what happens.

 

[Zack Barresse]

All your VBA has been said it will work in ver 12. So if you write a macro in ver 11, it will work in 12.

 

[pfarmer]

A question that i have about Excel12 is that will the VBA editor etc. change. I've just started writing macros in Excel11 and i don't really want to start from scratch again. I'm guessing due the limited release of information that i may have to wait and see what happens.

What I would find interesting for business if it had a runtime engine, that is you could develop new applications with all of these great new features and have them run on machines that do not have Excel on them.

I would see companies paying a lot more for the application if they could run the results on machines without it.

Perry