Microsoft Office Reference Guide

Mar 26, 2004

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In the last update we covered some of the main enhancements in Office 2007 related to MS Word. This week we'll cover Excel and PowerPoint.

Like Word and PowerPoin, Excel has the new contextual Ribbon, and the Home tab has many of your most familiar formatting options.

As you peruse the Excel ribbon, you will find that the Formula and Data tabs provide increased access to many of the numeric functions that you previously needed to drill down to locate in previous versions. But a few features that experienced users have gotten used to definitely have received a face lift in this version.

New Conditional Formatting

One of the hallmarks of the new version is the ability to visually analyze and spot trends in data. In the past, conditional formatting made this possible by simply making the font for certain numbers bold or a different color, or boxed, depending upon rules applied through a dialog box.

In this figure, the previous conditional format is visible with the negative figure being shown in red.

But notice the new look of the Conditional Formatting panel in Excel 2007 — you still have options to apply different rules, but with one mouse click you can instantly highlight the trend in sales in this simple table by applying a set of data bars.

The gallery for these also has the quick preview feature so that you can view the potential results before applying them.

I also recommend experimenting with the icon sets and color scales, each of which adds a distinctive flavor to the spreadsheet and enables a user to spot trends instantly.

Figure 1180

New Pivot Table Options

We covered the "old" pivot tables in an update a while back. We called the update Painless Pivot Tables because this is the most ignored and misunderstood Excel feature, in my opinion.

This time around Microsoft has revamped the Pivot Table Report feature significantly. You will find the new Pivot Table tools under the Insert tab, and they will allow you to easily make sense of a complex set of data similar to that shown in the figure, with information structured according to categories or columns that you may wish to reorganize

Figure 1181

This time around beginning the process does not require a wizard, just a simple dialog box that asks you where the data is (the default is almost always correct unless you have more than one table or spreadsheet on an Excel page).

It also allow you, as before, to place the results within the same page or on a separate worksheet. (Note: if you put it in the same worksheet you can click anywhere to let Excel know where the pivot table should go).

Figure 1182

The new Pivot Table Fields List is a lot easier to handle. First of all you can just check the fields you want to tabulate, and then drag and drop them into areas in the bottom of the dialog box.

Figure 1183

If the resulting pivot table is not to your liking, just move the items around or uncheck them to remove them entirely from the result.

Dropping an item into the Report Filter (here it's salesperson), makes it easy to use a drop down arrow to show only the result for a particular individual.

You could achieve a similar result by dropping either a product, quarter, or region into the filter area (or all three), and thereby drill down and identify results based on a complete reorganization of the data, and make sense out of it.

So if your boss asks, for example, who sold the most product in the east, filtering by region would provide the results.

New Charts – Use PowerPoint

While there is still plenty to know about Excel 2007, to look at the new charting engine, I prefer to switch to PowerPoint — you will soon see why. Like Excel, PowerPoint uses the ribbon and has the chart tool on the Insert tab.

Figure 1184

As before, when you add a new slide in PowerPoint you get layout options — the default here is a set of bullets and a content panel similar to the one users have had since version 2002/XP.

The chart dialog box is similar to what we've seen before — it resembles the old Excel Chart Wizard as well — and we can select a basic 3D column chart.

Figure 1185

But when we click OK something strange and wonderful happens — Excel opens — which is why I wanted to use PowerPoint. This is the full Excel, not a light version and it replaces the old Microsoft Graph for complete interoperability between Office programs for the first time.

What I also like is that in the Excel spreadsheet the category and series labels finally show you that these are the items that are represented by the data — there is no guesswork in the options.

Figure 1186

With the same sales data we used earlier pasted into the worksheet, our PowerPoint chart immediately looks usable; even the presence of the legend on the right does not adversely affect it.

Figure 1187

Notice that on the PowerPoint contextual ribbon the Chart tools are now highlighted and available with three additional sub-tabs: Design, Layout and Format.

In the Design tab there is another gallery for applying pre-set Chart Styles, and a layout gallery to move the chart elements around. The next figure shows the style gallery.

Figure 1188

But the really new stuff in all three of the main programs (Word also has the same chart tools) are the new effects options within the Format tab of the chart options.

Using the Shapes gallery (Format tab) to apply a some pre-sets to a selected series can enhance its looks, and then we can also select some options from the Effects gallery — like Bevel in this case (or Glow with the appropriate shape(s)) to give our chart almost a PhotoShop look.

Figure 1189

I like the fact that with the elimination of Microsoft Graph Excel and PowerPoint become real kindred spirits with Excel serving as a true datasheet, and that the same tools and options are available in all of the three main applications' Ribbon.

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