Excel on a Mac?

[NateO]

Hello!

So I recently volunteered to do some Pro bono work/training on Excel for a professional sports league. My direct contact uses Office 2004 on a Mac.

I had never used Excel on Mac before, never mind for something non-trivial. I have several opinions, while I like the fact that Mac-users have the option. But before I offer those...

Have you used Excel on a Mac before? What's your take on the subject?

 

[RoryA]

Excel 2004 is not bad at all, though I would guess Mike's experience is probably broader than most, so hopefully he will join in!
You lose a bit of functionality, at least as far as VBA is concerned, from what I've experienced and the support you can find for odd problems is considerably worse, due I guess to the much smaller user base. Performance is not bad, but not as good as Windows-based versions I think - I can't find any data on the memory usage, but it doesn't seem to be as good as say 2003. 2008 is, as far as I can tell, the Duplo bricks to 2003's Meccano set. It even makes 2007 look great.
I can only speak for Intel based Macs though - I don't know if 2004's better/worse on a PowerPC. It is a shame though, because if 2004 were a straight port of 2003, I'm not sure I'd ever need to switch my PC back on again.

 

[starl]

I've done VBA projects for Mac users.. it's torture. I won't do them anymore, but my main rule when I did was to create/test in Excel 97, no activex controls and limit userforms (none, if possible). Why the userform issue? Because their desktop settings would override *my* settings on the userforms - I couldnt' control the font size.... talk about headaches.

 

[Smitty]

As Rory said, Mike's the real expert on MAC's, but like Tracy, I've found it very difficult to make a PC wb work nicely with a MAC, especially on the VB side (and Mike's helped me a time or two).

From the straight sheet side it seems OK, although there are some big differences with display, functionality and navigation to get used to. I'd give you more, but I'm not in front of a MAC now (and don't plan to be anytime soon )

A colleague who uses a MAC has some pretty extensive wb's and she loves how they handle, especially with the MAC's memory management (she's got one wb that would kill a PC, and should be in Access, but works fine on her PowerBook). From her perspective it's great, from mine in trying to help her out it's been nothing less than challenging.

Sorry to sound so negative on it, maybe it's just that I haven't had enough practice on one.

Hopefully Mike will chime in.

 

[RoryA]

My experience has been the opposite - I'm in the middle of assisting someone with a workbook with a lot of defined names (tens of thousands; don't ask) which works fine on 2003 but won't even open in 2004 or 2008.

 

[NateO]

Interesting, these are the kind of thoughts I might have considering what I created on a PC. I didn't get that far with the Mac, I wasn't back to square one, but I couldn't even get past the interface.

I've never used 2008 and won't really speak to a VBA-less version of Office, that's a World I'd rather not be a part of. But here's a couple of things that were driving me batty while trying to simply work with Excel on a Mac.

No right-click. I knew before I even jumped on this thing that it's not available, but that didn't stop me. Perhaps I didn't realize just how much I right-click? Quick Sort? Quickly set some Column Widths? Paste Special? Forget about it, you're going to the menu. I can't recall why I was attempting to right-click so much, but I must have done it 10 times in an hour - the working definition of insanity - attempting the same thing over and over again while expecting different results.

There's probably a simple fix for this, a key combination perhaps, but we didn't know it, the F-keys don't work? I like my F-keys too, apparently. I know I tried to use F2 and F9 while auditing some Worksheet Functions, and nothing. The one F-key that did work was Alt-F11, more on this in a moment.

I missed normal keyboard keys. There is no Delete key, there is, but it functions like a Backspace. The Mac's keyboard is missing other keys, too, like End? Someone help me out here (I only did this for 2 hours a week ago from last Thursday). It's missing a key that I use a lot for scrolling, must be End...

And for my favourite. Like I said, Alt-F11 works, nice. So I get back into the Project, add a Module, I am ready to rip. When I write a lot of code that interacts with complex Worksheet data I jump back and forth between the front and back end of Excel quite a bit, here's where the fun really begins.

So I flip back to the Worksheet, look my data, flip back to the Project. The Project's still open, but the Module's gone. Where did that thing go? I'm messing around in the Project Explorer, I can't get this thing to Maximize? Fine, I kill the VBE, and step into the procedure from the front-end. I do this again, it's gone again, and my contact says, "I bet I know where it is." She cursors over the left side of the screen and this magic, vertical task bar appears. If you cursor down to the very lower left of the screen, there's the module. I would have never found that thing!

So, everything I did, other than the Advanced Filter (didn't work - but I was working very quickly and might have been user-error) seemed to perform fine once I got everything up and running. Code ran fine, did a little SpecialCells, some advanced Worksheet Functions, etc...

Performance was fine. But the interface almost drove me insane. Not quite like a fish being out of water, but it was just different enough where every few minutes or so I found my self saying "Wait a second, here. What?"

Granted, I'm very new to that interface, so I was probably guilty of some Mac-Newb gaffers.

 

[NateO]

...I'm in the middle of assisting someone with a workbook with a lot of defined names (tens of thousands; don't ask) which works fine on 2003 but won't even open in 2004 or 2008.

 

[RoryA]

If you have a 2 button mouse or a Might Mouse, you should be able to right-click but you need to enable it in system settings.

 

[NateO]

That would help me, a lot.

Also keep in mind that this wasn't my Mac, I had never used it before, didn't even attempt to tweak anything. I just sat down and started hammering away on the keyboard. So, I realize to some extent my thoughts aren't fair, as I tweak my PC's version of Excel quite a bit...

This 3-hour session also wasn't about project-finalization, either. This is a big work-in-progress, so it was more about going through a ton of concepts as quickly as possible. A working session somewhere between productive and training.

 

[starl]

*lol* Nate - your frustration reminds me of when I was typing on a french keyboard - all the keys are there, just not where I expect them. That is - the functionality you want is there.. just not where you expect it.

I had considered buying some kind of low-powered Mac to run Excel on it, but then MS dropped VBA.. tho, did I hear it will be back? Thing is - with the ability of Macs to run dual environments.. why don't people just by the PC version of Excel? Then they get all the options and pluses.. yes?