Office 2007 Public Beta Available

I look forward to testing the Office 2007 public beta.

I'm crossing my fingers that I will not have any problems when I upgrade to the final (retail) version (see, for example, this bulletin about VS 2005 and SQL Server 2005: msdn.microsoft.com/.../default.aspx ).

Downloaded and am running it.  I sure hope it gets faster!  Opening existing Excel spreadsheets and selecting cells is sloooow.  Graph with trend lines are all mixed up (I will report this).

I have a 2Ghz machine with a gig of RAM that is defragged each night and it is painful to use this.  I sure hope the final version makes me a believer!

First the website was too busy but downloaded ok a few hours later (and thankfully didn't ask me to repeat the questionnaire answers)

Download and installation was fine but activation won't work (can't find my internet connection - which isn't the problem) - and there's no alternative telephone activation or even email - so i now have 43 further attempts before the software is useless!

The help is still awful - typing "compile error in hidden module" as a search term gets me over 100 irrelevant answers - but it was number 3 in Google with a link to a knowledge base article 307410 - why not just replace all the help with a Google search

I loaded a file, confirmed in excel settings that calculation was set to automatic but the calculation button was still telling me that manual calculation was in operation

Despite all your hard work, I'm one irritated and frustrated Excel user this morning - long live Excel 2000

It downloaded and installed just fine, but activation didn't work. Just like for Mike S above, again sying that it can't find my internet connection. Obviously false, since I am writing this, and Outlook has no problems downloading e-mail.

Howdy - Mike, Micke, apparently the activation servers are a bit overloaded, so please give it a bit of time and try again.  Folks are trying to add capacity.

KerryF - there are some known issues with chart performance, so you might be seeing that.  If you want to email me your file, I can take a look.

Mike, I have passed on your comments on help to the team that builds that area of Office.

I would be happy to take a look at the calc setting problem - feel free to email me with more info or the file.

What is this SmartSource thing that it's making me download, and why does it reject the email address I used when registering to download the beta?  I am unable to get the software because of this.

So far, it looks a cracker. I've done a few things and it has all made sense - you can just see the thought that has gone into the new UI. Everything is just so much more "there"

One thing I have noted - I'm a constant user of pivot tables, and I keep struggling to find the button. I can see the argument for putting it under "Insert", but I still find myself going to "Data" every time, just like I have "forever". I can see the consistency issues, but I can also see a strong argument for putting this under "Data Tools".

If it stays where it is, I'll get used to it soon enough, but I'm yet to be convinced it is in the most discoverable position for someone who has ever used a pivot table before.

Any newsgroups for Office 2007 and Shapoint Designer 2007?  

First of all I'd like to say thanks for doing this blog, it has given me a very good insight in what's to come for Excel 12.

I downloaded Excel today and had a little 'test drive'. First thing I did was change the color scheme as the light blue really put me off but I guess that's a matter of personal taste. The Ribbon takes a bit of getting used to but once you get the idea of how it's organised it does work quite well. Some things don't feel 'logical' at first though as I found myself looking for a 'File' tab and looking for PivotTables on the Data tab. Adding all my frequently used items to the Quick Access Toolbar and then hiding the Ribbon to save screenspace will probably be my way of working in the future.

A few things I've noticed:

- When you hover over a new style in the Design tab you automatically see the result in your document. For charts this doesn't seem to work?

- I like the new conditional data bar formatting options. A nice option would be to have the color fade into a second color or transparency (so they automatically blend in with the background color) instead of white as now they can look a bit odd on dark backgrounds. Is this possible?

- In one of the Channel 9 videos there was a demonstration of converting a PivotTable based on an OLAP cube to formulas. I was hoping the same feature would be available for 'regular' PivotTables but that doesn't seem to be the case. Are there any plans of adding such a feature?

That's it based on first impressions, hopefully you'll have a minute to answer my questions. Thanks in advance!

I'm generally pleased with the new functionality but I'll comment further after a more detailed functional analysis.  The new conditional formatting, pivottable, table and other features are most welcome.

One thing that I'm truly disappointed about is the continued marginalization of Query.  Query hasn't changed in ten years and the interface is so old that it's reminiscent of Office 5. Furthermore, it uses the long obsolete DDE protocol to communicate with Excel.  However, Query is the only visual tool offered with Excel to query multiple tables and return the resultset to Excel for future auto-refreshing. Therefore, Microsoft's marginalization of this very useful tool is odd.  I'd recommend that the relevant features of Access query tool be ported to Excel as an XLL addin.  One good thing is that the XLL could be made available independently of the next version of Office, which may not be available for another 2-3 years after the commercial release of Office 2007.

It looks to me like lots of improvements have been made.

However, there is a problem that I have encountered with Excel Services. The scenario I have been looking at is described as follows.My spreadsheet contains yearly oil supply and demand data for three countries for display on an interactive chart. Users pass 3 pieces of information (start date, end date and country) to three cells (named start, end and inputcountry ranges). The MATCH and VLOOKUP functions are used to determine the extent of the data that should be displayed based on the user inputs. The Data Series for the chart are given by putting an OFFSET function that uses the cells that contain the extent information to return the required dynamic range.

This works fine when running on the client, and the graph changes according to the start date, end data and country entered. However, when this is published to Sharepoint with the 3 ranges as input variables, the graph doesn't render.

This kind of functionality would be very useful for me, so am I attempting to do something impossible?

I can supply the spreadsheet if required.

Chaz, thanks for the feedback.  It is also on the Tables tab.  Once you have started using Tables, you will find that a natural entry point (at least I do).

bob_chauvin, there are newsgruops available at www.microsoft.com/.../default.mspx

Martin, I agree on colour theme.  "Live preview" in charts has been turned off (at least for now) for performance reasons.  No options around data bars, although it is an area we are going to look at in the future, since we have heard that sort of question a fair bit.  Same for the decomposition of PivotTables - not for 2007, but it is on our list.

Colin, thanks for the comments on query.

Tim, please send me the spreadsheet - we can take a look.  It sounds like it should work.

Hasy message but I'm pressed for time ATM.

Lots of crashes with Excel. Very buggy product. Well it is a beta I guess...

OK

slow spreadsheets - repeatable crashes. I have a simple chart which plots some chart portfolio values against the FTSE. Dead slow, then crashes. Removed the chart, seems a lot better. Most spreadsheets seem slower and a severe retrograde step IMHO.

Locks in a dialogue alert loop when opeing a second spreadsheet something like _FilterDB name already in use... please rename... which makes no difference. I figured this is to do with Auto Filter being used on both spreasheets and Excel internals getting confused, so removed the Auto Filter and the problem dispppeared. i.e. seems like Excel itself using the names as not a name I recognise.

Conditional formatting. I used this a lot in previous versions of Excel. The rules do not seem to "stick" especially when copy/pasting and new lines items appear in the rule list when you are not expecting them.

Tables... confuses me. How do I get rid of the formatting BTW?

<<<<Formats.

I noticed something interesting with Table styles fromatting.  If you convert the Table to a range and then convert the range back to a Table, you can no longer apply a style to the table.