Excel/Office 2007 - Who uses it?

[SydneyGeek]

I use 2003 and 2007 at home, and my main client switched to 2007 a few months ago.

The Ribbon doesn't bother me that much -- I use keyboard shortcuts most of the time anyway -- but some of the features that got dropped out of VBA drove me nuts for a while until I found workarounds.
The conditional formatting changes were mostly unnecessary and the CF interface is just plain confusing.

That said, I can be productive in the new version, and I sometimes find myself scratching my head in 2003 and asking myself "where was that feature again?"

On the plus side, some of the form features in Access are definitely useful -- such as being able to resize fields in Layout view, with the data visible.

Denis

 

[xld]

Still don't get Tables/Lists.

They are one of the good/best fetaures in 2007 IMO, so stick with them.

I wish MS had put more time into pivot tables, or upgrading MSQuery - those are some great tools that can really be better or more user-friendly.

Agreed, and many other things besides, DV, Charts, CF, et al.

VBA - c'mon MS stay with me! I don't want to have to buy Visual Studio so I can program Excel. Wish I knew where that was going. Maybe VSTO will be available in a version for those who want to program office applications...? It's an expensive program as it is...

AT some point you will have no choice, VBA will be so far behind the curve.

And overall, I'm betting I'll like Office 2008 (?) better....Maybe I can even wait it out (like skipping Vista).

Well, seeing as 2008 is gone, it is going to be 2009 (at the earliest).

 

[Mark O'Brien]

Well, seeing as 2008 is gone, it is going to be 2009 (at the earliest).

2008 is Mac-tastic.

 

[schielrn]

I actually really like 2007. There were many things that required a macro before that help me greatly with office spreadsheets. Everyone in my office loves to color code for some reason and now I can easliy filter and sort on there ways and see what they were getting at.

Also I love the remove duplicates button as that helps greatly with many of the things I download from our legacy systems.

I like many of the new functions, averageif, countifs, sumifs and especially iferror, even though you could do those all before it is much easier now and much easier to teach others how to use them.

I am also a keyboard shortcut guy and not one that uses the ribbon too much, but once you learn where the specific features you use on teh ribbon are, I feel it is much easier to get to them.

I've been using it for almost 6 months now and feel very comfortable with it.

Also love there new filtering ways of being able to multi-select and also with pivot tables. And I love the smaller file sizes.

I'm not sure I like the new pivot table design and wish I could find a way to always make it the classic table (I know you can change it after creating it, but I want all tables in classic).

If I think of other things when I get back to work and use it I will list them.

 

[xenou]

Thanks Schielrn, xld, others - good to get your feedback. I was actually planning to "bite the bullet" - get it on my laptop so I'll actually use it more (here at work and elsewhere) - then decided I'd wait - now I think I'll go for it. I'd better act quick before I change my mind again My initial experiences at home have been positive (after the first few days of pulling my hair out not knowing where to go on the menus). There's an interesting thread on a VBA/development/2007 in the lounge going on right now too:
http://www.mrexcel.com/forum/showthread.php?t=380687

Does anyone have any direct experience with VSTO? I'm assuming I have to buy Visual Studio to get the tools for office...I believe it gives you access to .NET tools for development with Office applications, but I just have never seen it in practice.

Alex.

Edit: Note xld, I'll try to keep an open mind about the tables/lists...

 

[xld]

Does anyone have any direct experience with VSTO? I'm assuming I have to buy Visual Studio to get the tools for office...I believe it gives you access to .NET tools for development with Office applications, but I just have never seen it in practice.

I think I am right in saying that previously, you bought Visual Studio, and VSTO was an additional if integrated tool, whereas VSTO is fully bundled with VS2008. VS2008 is fantastic, the IDE is just so rich, it is a joy to use. However, building Excel addins and the like is still a problem deploying. It is getting better but it is not good, and trying t build something like a simple UDF is a non-starter at present. With the cost of VS2008, I think it is hard to justify at present unless you are deploying to people who are all 2007, all Net 3.5, in other words you know the target.

 

[RichardS]

I think the magnitude of the roll-out is keeping my work from going to 2007. On 2003 at present. My daughters school has it though, so doing homework on the week-end we jad to download the file converter so she could us my laptop, which is on 2000.

 

[yytsunamiyy]

As a result I've posted some incompatible code (for which I apologize).

I just wanted to see how many people are "actually" using v.2007 vs. testing in their spare time. From what I've seen, it's not a lot, so time permitting, I'll be uninstalling v.2007 and reinstalling v.2003/2007, so I can run them side-by-side.

I did (almost exactly) that, installing 07 on the same machine 2000 was already installed on. Did some coding in 2007 (project took me about 8 weeks), tested it in 2000 - all was running just fine. Took the file to a machine that only ever had 2003 installed - oodles and oodles of bugs and runtime errors. Seems that the 2007 libraries replaced the 2000 libraries on my machine, allowing 2000 to run 2007 code - I basically ended up rewriting the whole thing on a 2003 machine...

2007 earned a special place in my heart just for that - never mind the puck-ugly ribbon with Kindergarden style buttons that only serves to make you look for hours for functionality you know used to exist.

Having said that, I do now do most of my excelling in 07 - not least because I'm just finishing my studies and figure I would look seriously stupid if I write in my CV that I am proficcient in Excel, a potential employer sits me down in front of '07 and I start searching for a couple of minutes before I find the button I need.

So, all said and done, I'm using '07 - but grudgingly...

 

[Domski]

We were supposed to be moving to 2007 this year but it doesn't look likely now as ICT are concentrating on moving from Lotus to Outlook and getting our corporate BI solution moved onto MS technology first.

I was really hoping it would be soon as I'm on 2007 at home now but just don't use it enough to get proficient with the Ribbon and when I do stray on here at the weekend quite often just stare at it for a couple of mins before I realise where what I am looking for is.

If there's one thing that I find more annoying than the Ribbon it's the 'Help' which just seems to randomly suggest things that bear no resemblance to what you have typed in.

In short I guess I am getting used to 2007 slowly but I can't say I'm liking it.

Dom

 

[schielrn]

Ifthere's one thing that I find more annoying than the Ribbon it's the 'Help' which just seems to randomly suggest things that bear no resemblance to what you have typed in.

I definitely agree with this. Help sucks in 2007 IMO, or I am just not using it correctly?

How can one use help incorrectly? So it must just be me.