Currently, the Excel development team is spending a lot of time tuning Excel 2007’s calculation performance to make it as fast as possible. Given the near-infinite variety of things we see people build in Excel, we are always looking for good examples of workbooks that are calculation-intensive to help us compare Excel 2007’s calculation performance with previous versions’ performance on real-world files that matter to customers. At some point last week it dawned on me that some of the Excel 12 blog...

A few months ago, I described the new features we have added to Excel 2007 in the area of conditional formatting. One of the new formats we added is called a “data bar” … check out this earlier post for a refresher , but the basic idea is that Excel draws a bar in each cell representing the value of that cell relative to the other cells in the selected range. Here is a shot from that post. (Click to enlarge) The Excel 2007 UI allows you to choose whatever colour you want for your data bars, but,...

One of the program managers on my team (Charlie) has put together a list of 214 keyboard shortcuts available in Excel. While it isn’t exhaustive (for example, it doesn’t cover shortcuts available in dialogs), I find it a useful presentation of the shortcuts that are available when performing basic editing in Excel, so I thought I would share it with you. If you click the picture below, you will access a PDF file which you can download and print. (The PDF was generated by a recent build of Microsoft...

Today, a video was released on Channel 9 where Mike Arcuri, Group Program Manager on the Office Business Intelligence team, walks through some of Excel 12's new features. Much (but not all) of this is what I covered recently in the PivotTable and the Excel Services articles, so this is a good chance to see these features in action (as well as some other new Office stuff).

Over the past few months, I have been asked three specific questions repeatedly either via comments ore more often via email. One of them, "how do I sign up for the public beta", was one that I could answer (which is to register here ). Another one, which I couldn't answer until yesterday, was "how much will it cost?" What changed yesterday? Well, yesterday Office 12 became "the 2007 Microsoft Office System". Along with the naming announcement, pricing and packaging information has been revealed...

Now that we have covered OLAP formulas, I would like to explain a set of work we did in the area of “connection management” in Excel 12 workbooks. Specifically, I want to show you three new things that you can do in a workbook that is connected to external data (whether that is an Access database, and Oracle database, and Analysis Services cube, etc.). In Excel 12, you can see a list of the connections that are used in your workbook; see where those connections are used; change the properties of...

Actually, before I talk about data connections, I want to cover one other way that users can author OLAP formulas ... users can create a PivotTable bound to an OLAP cube and then use the Field List to quickly add all the fields that they care about to thier PivotTable. Then, with a single command, they can convert that PivotTable to a set of formulas, where each formula uses one of the new CUBE functions. Fast and easy. Once the Pivot Table has been converted to formulas, users can insert rows and...

Previously when discussing CUBE functions, I showed a couple of examples of reports based on OLAP data that could be built using CUBE functions. Now I’d like to explain how we’ve done something very special with Formula AutoComplete to make it easy to navigate the OLAP namespace while authoring CUBE functions. Formula Auto-Complete for CUBE function arguments Formula AutoComplete for CUBE function arguments has some special behaviours relative to the other functions in Excel. As a brief refresher...

I have had a number of emails in the last week asking for a list of the SQL Server Analysis Services features that we support, asking for a list of the SQL Server Analysis Services features that are new in their 2005 release, etc., so here is a list that hopefully answers folks’ questions. Specifically, here are the major features available in SQL Server Analysis Services that Excel 12 supports. “New in AS2005” means the some or all of the feature is new to SQL Server Analysis Services 2005. "OM...

Last time, I explained the seven new CUBE functions that are available in Excel 12 to fetch data from Analysis Services cubes. With the theory that a picture is worth a thousand words, I would like to walk through a few examples that illustrate how these functions can be used to produce reports based on OLAP data (data that comes from SQL Server Analysis Services). Example 1 – Basic Report Let’s start by taking a look at this report which shows some data from the Adventure Works sample cube (which...