Thinking of purchasing Excel 2016. Any comments from those that already have purchased 2016?
Happy New Year, Brian!
Long time no hear! How's the handicap these days? It better be down to about 75 by now! I think I'm up to about 225, but here those **** white balls get lost in the snow!
Regarding 2016, it really depends on what you want to do. If 2003 does what you need (and you're not up to having an entirely frustrating experience learning the whole new Ribbon interface) then I'd stay away.
If you're up for some
really cool stuff, like the ability to build charts with Bing Maps directly in Excel (like where in the islands all your golf courses are and their pars - and how much you've spent on each
), or Power Pivot/Power Query, etc., then I'd totally go for it. But it is a very frustrating transition, especially from the normal File menu interface that we were used to using.
The Ribbon aside, Excel has grown a lot: 1MM+ rows and 16,000 columns, so you can now use it like a database with absolutely no fear of Excel crashing (OK, I'm just being an A$$ there)...64+ levels of IF statements and Conditional Formatting, which is a great idea (OK, I'm just being an A$$ there too)...Seriously, there is a whole lot of cool stuff, but it still acts like the old time Excel, so what do you need to do?
Now to more painful things:
You will need to think about which delivery route you want to go: Excel 2016 as a stand-alone product or Office 2016 (as the suite - and if you want Home/Student/Pro/Pro +/Alien, etc.), which are one-time purchases, or go with Office 365 which is subscription based (monthly/annually), but constantly updated and allows you to install on up to 5 devices (including MACS). Unfortunately with 365, you still need to figure out which service level (aka "Version") you want, and MS doesn't make it easy to figure out what's best for you - But they do have a live chat where you can ask. In fact, I did just that and asked for you and they suggested Office 365 Personal (that'll make a fun blog post
)...
The 365 subscription has access to your own Sharepoint site, which is pretty cool and MS has done a really good job of making it user friendly (but most people will never find it). Frankly, as much as I hated the new Ribbon versions of Office (and the whole 365 thing), I'm pretty much a 365 fan now. It's just too **** hard to explain because MS does such a crap job of making things easy to understand.
All giving MS crap aside, I'm a real fan of 2016 and they've got some
really smart folks on the Excel team (it's the marketing people who are freaking idiots). I'd go for it if you need all the new stuff, but if 2003 works for you then I'd stay the hell away.
(But 2016 is really cool)...
Edit: I forgot linked Pivot Table sources (read: database relationships, so no more VLOOKUPs to build a master), Slicers, Timeline Slicers, etc.
If you're a Dashboarding person then GO FOR IT, if you're balancing your checkbook, then probably not.
Smitty
