One of our team members recently noticed an issue with Excel VBA code running on Windows Vista (it is something that happens on WindowsXP too, it is just more pronounced on Windows Vista), so I thought I would write it up. While it is not the sort of issue that the Excel team can easily address, it is something worth mentioning to all the VBA developers out there, in part to see how people might be handling this situation already. The behaviour in question is how Excel behaves when VBA code runs...

A while ago, I wrote a post about 214 keyboard shortcuts . In the last few months, we have added 4 more for one reason or another, so I wanted to pass them on. (I have not updated the matrix I included as part of that post, because I accidently misplaced the file that I used to make it in the first place. At some point I will.) In no particular order, here they are: Reapply Sort and Filter (to a Table or an AutoFiltered range) - CTRL+ALT+L Refresh (Query Table, PivotTable, etc.) = ALT+F5 Refresh...

Fairly recently, the Microsoft Windows Compute Cluster Server 2003 team publically released their product. What is “Windows Compute Cluster Server”? Lots of information available here , but, to borrow a line from their site, Microsoft Windows Compute Cluster Server 2003 is “an integrated, standards-based compute clustering platform built on top of Windows Server 2003 x64 Edition”. The goal of this work is to “empower users” by allowing them to “easily harness distributed computing resources to solve...

Over the next week or so, I am taking some time off to head back home with my family. I have set up some content that, with any luck, will get auto published while I am gone, so there should be stuff to read. That said, I wont be around to reply to comments right away. Please still feel free to post comments – I will go through them all when I am back.

A few months back I wrote several posts about the improvements that we made to PivotTables in Excel 2007. I even showed how summarizing data in different ways is now just a right click away on the “Summarize Data By...” menu. What I didn’t show was that in addition to these standard ways of summarizing data (sum, count, max, min, average, etc.), Excel already supports some more complex summary views for items contained in a PivotTable. For instance, by selecting “More Options,” you can choose to...

Today we have the second of two guest posts from Patrick Smith, a program manager on the Office Programmability team. Overview and Background Managed code is becoming more and more prevalent in add-ins written for Microsoft Office products. Also shipping around the same time frame as the 2007 Microsoft Office System is the next version of Visual Studio Tools for Office (VSTO). The next version of VSTO has added support for creating application level add-ins. The demand for better support of managed...

One of the topics I was going to cover at some point was the "command well", which is the list of commands in the various Office products. You can use this list to add or remove things from the "Quick Access Toolbar". For example, for those of you that want to continue using the PivotTable wizard to build PivotTables, you can find it in the command well and add it to your QAT. Jensen just wrote a couple of detailed entries on his UI blog, so instead of covering the same ground twice, I will just...

Today we have the first of two guest posts from Patrick Smith, a program manager on the Office Programmability team. Writing managed code against the 2007 Microsoft Office System products requires the use of an interop assembly. Just as we did with Microsoft Office System 2003, we are providing primary interop assemblies with the new 2007 Office. We’ve also made some changes to make the PIA’s a better experience with 2007. Among the areas we’ve addressed are: Installation Redistribution Backward...

Greetings – since I was in absentia for more than a week, comments are shut off for recent posts. Accordingly, I am going to reply here to the last round of comments here. For those of you that suggested new topics, I have written them down, and will try and work them in over time. Thanks for your help. Sam asked “Any changes in the audinting toolbar in Excel 12?” Answer – not except better exposure in the Ribbon. Phillip Lundeen asked “What happens if I use Excel 12 and bring in a 150,000 item query...

Over the next few days, I am on a ridiculously over-scheduled training course, so I will not be producing any new content until sometime mid next week (and probably not answering comments or emails until then too). In the meantime, I wanted to ask you what you would like to see covered in this blog over the next few months. Way back when I started this last September , I wrote “I plan to write this blog from now until around the general availability of Office 12, and I am hoping to talk in some depth...