Microsoft Office Reference Guide

Mar 26, 2004

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While we're really concentrating on Microsoft Office proper, I wanted to show you highlights of an amazing program that takes Excel to a new level. Xcselsius Pro, from a company called Infommersion, lets you create animated interactive spreadsheets and output them in Flash/Shockwave format. It also enables you to embed the files into a Web page or a PowerPoint slide.

If you need any more incentive to check it out, this program was voted Best of COMDEX in 2003.

To illustrate what Xcelsius can do, let's look at a typical budget. It shows the potential mortgage payments for a prospective client of Surrealty Corporation.

Figure 148

Notice that certain cell values are derived from formulas that calculate results based on the values of other cells. Here, the Payment cell is calculated based on the interest rate, term of the loan, and principal balance.

When we open Xcselsius Pro, we are given a splash screen with various templates and tutorials. But to show off our stuff, we'll proceed to the first step, which is to simply import the model (or the spreadsheet) which want to animate into Xcelsius.

To accomplish this, we click Data > Import Model and locate our source Excel file.

TIP

Don't worry about Xcelsius modifying or messing up your Excel file. It works with its own temporary version of the file once it's imported.

Figure 149

With your file imported, you'll begin to populate the Xselsius workspace with Components from the panel on the right. Scroll down to navigate through the components to see the various sliders, dials, labels, and other objects that can dramatically convey your numerical or financial data.

Figure 150

To add a control like the dial to your composition, click it to view it by itself in the preview panel, and then just click in the composition.

To make the dial do something (and this is true of all the Xcelsius interactive components, you right-click and select Properties. (Access users should be adept at this).

In the properties panel, under the General tab, you click on the range selection icon to open the Excel model, and indicate which cell is controlling the selected component. In this case, it's the first Payment cell.

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Getting the hang of assigning ranges to controls takes some time. Take a look at the samples on the Infommersion Web site. The best clue is that interactive controls are always connected to cells based on the results of formulas.

If you've ever tried to revise an existing Excel chart, you're probably already familiar with the range selection controls. They allow you to select or highlight areas of data in Excel (ranges), and then click on them again to return to the chart wizard (or in this case Xcelsius).

Figure 151

After populating the composition, you can test it by clicking Preview. Now, as you change the values in the interest and other cells, you see dramatically how it affects the dial, and the results box that shows the actual value.

Figure 152

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You will also want to populate the composition with Labels that explain the functionality and results.

Once the composition is complete, you will want to determine how to show off the final Shockwave file.

Under File > Export you will see four choices:

Macromedia Flash (Shockwave): a standard SWF file.
HTML: the SWF file and a Web page that contains it.
Outlook: an E-mail message with the shockwave file attached.
PowerPoint slide: with the shockwave file embedded (shown here).

Figure 153

One final tip as you explore Xcelsius... Among the most powerful controls are listboxes, radio buttons, and others that let you determine which range of data a particular control will show.

In these cases, the properties panel will have two range controls. The first will gather the Source Data, and the second will Insert the data into a blank area of the model.

It is this newly populated area of the spreadsheet that the other control will finally show.

Figure 154

In the example shown here, the pie chart shows percentages for any one of a series of individuals. Depending upon which individual is selected in the listbox, his or her data is temporarily put into the Insert in range, and displayed in the pie chart. Very slick.

As I said, the best way to learn Xcelsius is to try the samples on the Web site to see which are closest to the type of project you want to do. (By the way, there's an even more comprehensive mortgage calculator on their site, but I wanted to work with one because I already had a budget spreadsheet, and also because our sample company is Surrealty.)

You can always also reopen the Welcome splash screen in Xcelsius to take a look at more samples or begin a project from a template. Just click Help > Welcome to bring up the tutorial panel that also shows up when you first open Xcelsius.

Figure 155

Then you can go through their gallery of sample interactive projects that you can open, hack and reverse engineer.

Figure 156 ***insert bunzel_officeguide_fig109.jpg

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You'll find the underlying Excel files for the models in a Sample folder in the Xcelsius program folder.

If you're an Excel whiz who wants to go way beyond ordinary charts and graphs, this gem of a program is for you.

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