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Today I decided to take a quick break from Excel Services to
First, the status bar
Zoom control - we have added a slider that allows the user to adjust the “zoom” of the document without needing to pop up any windows. When you slide the control, the document resizes as you slide, so you can adjust to just the “zoom” you want before you let go of the slider. You can also click on the + and – buttons to increment or decrement “zoom” by 10% per click. Finally, for those of you that like using the zoom dialog, you can just click on the 100% (which is a button) and it will launch the Zoom dialog.
(Click to enlarge)
Multiple status bar calculations – In previous versions of Excel, when you selected numerical data, you could see a summary of that data in the status bar – sum, count, average, etc. You could choose from 6 different summaries, but you could only see one at a time. That seemed unnecessarily limiting, so in Excel 12 we let you put any or all of them on the status bar, so you can see sum, min, max, numerical count, count, and average all at once if you like, or any combination of the six.
You specify the items you would like to see by right-clicking on the status bar.
View switcher – In the tradition of Microsoft Word and Microsoft PowerPoint, we have added a set of buttons to the status bar that allow you to switch between views. One is for normal view, one is for page break preview, and the third is for a great new view we have added to Excel 12 – page layout view. Much more on page layout view when I cover the formatting, printing, and layout improvements we have made in Excel 12 (probably early next year at current speed).
Insert worksheet button – ok, this isn’t on the status bar, but it is close, so I am including it in this post. You may have noticed in previous posts that there was an additional small button after the tabs in the spreadsheets I have been showing off. When clicked, this button adds a worksheet. The point is simply to make it quicker to add worksheets to your workbooks.
And now for some screenshots of charts …
We have done a lot of great work in charting this release (see the overview post for a bit of a description). I am going to cover this work in detail sometime around the new year, but to give everyone an idea of what is coming, I thought I would post a few screenshots of charts I made yesterday afternoon. This should give everyone an idea as to the vastly improved charting that is coming with Office 12. The most obvious thing you will notice is the range of new graphic effects, like transparency, lighting effects, shadows, reflections, etc. Besides being much better looking with a greater range of graphic effects, we have also done a lot to make it a snap to create a very wide variety of different, professional-looking charts. Each of the charts below were created with no more than 2-3 clicks total, so the whole thing took a matter of minutes. Enjoy.
(Note, there is more than one chart on each screenshot, so I encourage you to click on the images below and take a look.)
Next week, back to Excel Web Services and more about running spreadsheets on the server.
Comments: (26) Collapse
Will there be any true 3-dim plot and grid charts?
Microsoft has stated that they haven't developed any new chart types (i.e., "true" 3D charts). What they have done is a great deal of work on the "new graphic effects, like transparency, lighting effects, shadows, reflections, etc." The charts certainly look more attractive, but I wonder if people will be any less likely to create charts that portray the data inaccurately.
Looks like the graphics capabilities are finally caught up to those of Mac Office :)
Jon, sorry to hear that. It world have been a major step forward in Analysing the data.
This does not get you very far:
www.tushar-mehta.com/.../3d_surface
I try to avoid the 2-dimensions visualisied in 3D. They look good but are not very informative.
Looking forward to something like this:
www.ozgrid.com/.../excel-statistics-analytical-add-in.htm
While I'm at it and can't post under Function...
Can this be an option?
=LOOKUPV(,<table>,,,)
Examples:
=LOOKUPV("ABC",A1:C100,3,0,"Error!")
=LOOKUPV("ABC",A1:C100,3,0,"") --> ""
=LOOKUPV("ABC",A1:C100,3,0) --> the usual error values
IF: =IF(A1 #VALUE!
IF: =IF(A1 Error
Ola - Don't you want VLOOKUP instead of LOOKUPV?
For those of use with lots of macros that use
Application.StatusBar = OurMessageHere
how much (little) usable space will remain in the status bar?
Will there be any way to disable these new UI controls?
Are the old indicators NUM, SCRL, OVR, etc. gone for good?
What's the orange dot just to the right of the status mode indicator (Ready)?
And now that I've noticed the new sheet tab to the right of the last sheet tab in sheet selector, if there are so many sheets that only a few tabs appear at a time, will the new worksheet tab be sticky and always appear on the right side of the visible tabs, or will one need to scroll to the last sheet's tab in order to access it? If the latter, wouldn't it have made more sense to have added it to the left side of the horizontal scroll bar?
Can I enter a plea for anything which can be clicked on, such as the 100% or Min/Max/Avg to have some sort of visual indication that it can be clicked on. If it doesn't look like a button, how are we to know that it can be clicked?
I think there should also be a quick way to return to 100% zoom. Is there?
Simon -
As you scroll past it, the zoom factor hesitates a bit at 100%, so it's easy to hit.
Harlan -
That little Add Sheet tab worries me. As I go back and forth between sheets, I wonder how many times I'll be going to the sheet I just inserted rather than the one I thought I clicked on. Shift+F11 is so convenient already.
- Jon
Jon Peltier...
...
|That little Add Sheet tab worries me. As I go
|back and forth between sheets, I wonder how many
|times I'll be going to the sheet I just inserted
|rather than the one I thought I clicked on.
FWIW, Lotus 123 has a new sheet button just to the right of it's worksheet tab scroller which looks approximately like , i.e., two triangual buttons forming a square with NE-SW diagonal splitting it in two. It has always been problematic. Microsft seems not to learn from it's competitors UI mistakes.
I like the status bar.
It would be nice if one of the calculations could be choose from other excel functions (like median, percentile,...). This would help to satisfy a variety of user needs for the calculations.
Jean
Ditto what Simon said. If something is clickable, purposely giving it no affordances that make it look clickable is just silly. I've never understood why that design mistake (made in 1997, btw) has been carried on for so long.
I like the new zoom feature.
The new insert sheet feature "sounds" good but Harlan's question raises a good point about having to scroll to "find" it and would seem to negate any gain in convenience.
The new graphics look absolutely beautiful, but what efforts are you making to help people make useful graphics?
A useful graphic is true to the data and helps the user understand the true message in the data. Many (Tufte, Bertin, Cleveland, Wilkinson, Chambers, Tukey, to name a few) offer advice on how to create graphics to build an understand of the data. How does excel facilitate this?
Will excel graphics forever be doomed to merely creating pretty business charts?
I read your blog with great interest! I use Excel alot and I teach Excel several times a week. You really seem to have made many common tasks much easer! Great stuff!
In all previous version of Excel the dialog for customizing page headers and footers is just the worst dialog box in Office. Are there going to be any changes for that in Excel 12? Since we now have Page Layout I hope that the Page Header is edited more in the same way you do in Word.
How come there never been any tool tips for the buttons in that particular dialog box?
Comments: (loading) Collapse