In this blog post I’ll walk through some of the new Conditional Formatting features in Excel 2010 such as: Cross-Sheet References Robust Error Handling Performance Enhancements Cross-Sheet References In Excel 2010, you can create conditional formatting with references to a different sheet on the workbook. This means that you no longer need to copy or link your data to the same sheet when using conditional formatting. For Example, let us look at the monthly sales data for a bookstore chain....

The purpose of the Ribbon in Outlook is to help you become more efficient in getting your work done – be that processing e-mail in your Inbox (Mail Home Tab), managing your Calendar (Calendar Home Tab), or doing work in Tasks (Tasks Home Tab). In designing the Ribbons, we strove for consistency so that you’ll always be able to look to the left side to create a new item or to the right side to find a contact – and to the middle to get what you need to do - done. In Mail, the center...

If you’re a fan of the Outlook 2007 To-Do Bar, but wish your upcoming appointments and tasks could be shown even when Outlook was minimized, I’ve got great news for you, you can do this today with the Outlook Sidebar Gadgets. One of the new features introduced in Windows Vista is the Windows Sidebar, an application that allows gadgets—small applications that provide quick access to useful information or commands—to be displayed on your desktop or in the Sidebar. The Sidebar presented a great opportunity...

Word 2010 comes with key new features --including a customizable ribbon, new art effects, and the Navigation Pane. You can download and try out fully functional Word 2010 (along with the rest of Office 2010) for 60 days . Another option? Add the convenience of cloud computing with the Microsoft Office 365 Beta . Learn more about how this new offering can help you streamline your business and give you access to your work from anywhere. -- Joannie Stangeland

Since I have been writing this blog, I have periodically been asked “what’s up with the Office Web Components”. Today, I wanted to post the official “roadmap” from the Office Web Components team. Here you go: As some of you have recently noticed, the Office Web Components are no longer installed when installing Microsoft Office 2007. The Office Web Components (OWC) are a set of ActiveX® controls that provide four principal components: Spreadsheet, Chart, PivotTable®, and Data Source Control (DSC...

Today we reached an important milestone in the development of the new Office.  Moments ago, the Office engineering team signed off on the Release to Manufacturing (RTM) build. This milestone means the coding and testing phase of the project is complete and we are now focused on releasing the new Office via multiple distribution channels to our consumer and business customers.

This is the most ambitious release of Office we've ever done. It spans the full family of Office applications, servers and cloud services. The new Office has a fresh, touch friendly design that works beautifully on Windows 8 and unlocks modern scenarios in social, reading, note-taking, meetings and communications. We are proud to achieve this milestone and are eager to deliver this exciting release to our customers.

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To this point in the blog, I haven't talked too much about the file formats that Excel 2007 uses, since Brian Jones has been covering the new Office Open XML format pretty well in his blog. Today I thought I'd give an overview of the three main formats that we have in Excel 2007. File Format Number 1 - Office Open XML (XLSX, XLSM, XLTX, XLTM, and XLAM files) The Office Open XML format is a full fidelity (all features of the product are supported) file format for Excel 2007, and it is the default...

Today’s author, Chad Rothschiller, a Program Manager on the Excel team, is back with a follow up from his previous post on VBA and Excel performance . I want to start off this post by thanking everyone who sent in their examples in response to my January request. It is incredibly helpful to be able to look at what you all are doing with Excel! Not only did I see a huge variety in how Excel is being used, you also pointed out various tips and tricks for writing fast VBA code in Excel. In this...

Today’s author is Ron de Bruin , an Excel MVP. You can find more useful tips and links to Excel add-ins at his website: http://www.rondebruin.nl/ You see a lot of old SaveAs code that does not specify the FileFormat parameter. In Excel versions before Excel 2007, code without this parameter will not cause too many problems because Excel will use the current FileFormat of the existing file -- and the default FileFormat for new files is a normal workbook. But because there are so many new file...

Can't find the Out of Office Assistant to update your contacts for a long July 4th weekend? Well, for Outlook 2010 you find it where you find all the other options and tools: the Backstage view (click the gold File tab in the upper-left corner of the program window) and then click the Automatic Replies button.

This new video training goes over the basics of setting up Automatic Replies for any occasion (including the most frequent, your out-of-office message). But the training also has a workaround if you don’t have a mailbox on Microsoft Exchange, a program that delivers email to Outlook and your mobile devices. Here’s the first part of the training and let me explain more below about Outlook and Exchange...

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