Meet the Excel 12 formula bar, or “don’t hijack my grid!”

re: Meet the Excel 12 formula bar, or “don’t hijack my grid!”

Pamela — Wed, 02 Jun 2010 17:57:45 GMT

Could someone help me find an excel formula that gives me the accuracy percentage of processing? I have a population of 278 with 2 errors. How can I obtain the accuracy of processing? Thanks!

re: Meet the Excel 12 formula bar, or “don’t hijack my grid!”

Pamela — Wed, 02 Jun 2010 17:57:32 GMT

Could someone help me find an excel formula that gives me the accuracy percentage of processing? I have a population of 278 with 2 errors. How can I obtain the accuracy of processing? Thanks!

re: Meet the Excel 12 formula bar, or “don’t hijack my grid!”

Harlan Grove — Fri, 21 Oct 2005 17:36:04 GMT

ben...

...

|I'd imagine the space next to the insert

|function button is there to hold the committ

|cancel buttons that appear when editing a

|formula same as current versions. Did you

|forget about those?

You're probably right. I wouldn't so much say I forgot about them, more that I've never paid any attention to them since I use the keyboard exclusively to enter and edit formulas.

Still, it looks like wasted space. Perhaps only the little dot on the left side is wasted space, or maybe it's some new feature as yet unmentioned. Even so, the new enter and cancel buttons would seem to be a bit larger (wider) than their current counterparts with no good reason to be wider since wider buttons mean a narrower formula bar.

re: Meet the Excel 12 formula bar, or “don’t hijack my grid!”

ben — Fri, 21 Oct 2005 00:50:29 GMT

Harlan...

I'd imagine the space next to the insert function button is there to hold the committ cancel buttons that appear when editing a formula same as current versions. Did you forget about those?

re: Meet the Excel 12 formula bar, or “don’t hijack my grid!”

Charles Williams — Thu, 20 Oct 2005 08:12:33 GMT

This is all excellent stuff.

I agree with Harlan that the dimple and insert function button seem large.

Also seems inconsistent (maybe this should be a question for Jensen): if you are using a resize bar to expand the formula bar vertically, why not also use a resize bar to move the divider between the name box and the formula bar?

And if you use the vertical resize bar to expand the formula bar, why not expand the name box vertically at the same time?

Thats what I used in the Name Manager addin and people seem happy with it.

re: Meet the Excel 12 formula bar, or “don’t hijack my grid!”

Harlan Grove — Thu, 20 Oct 2005 06:15:11 GMT

Why not show screen images of the new formula bar with a *FORMULA* in it? The screen images all show text constants in the formula bar.

Is there any good reason the insert function button needs to be so wide? It looks like it could hold the cute little dot on the left side and the f_sub_x symbol on the right side at 1/3 its current width. That'd leave more room to display formula text. Wouldn't that be a good thing?

re: Meet the Excel 12 formula bar, or “don’t hijack my grid!”

David Gainer — Thu, 20 Oct 2005 00:42:48 GMT

Greetings. Again, thanks for the comments, feedback, humour, and discussion. One thing to note is that what I am presenting is our current builds. We will be releasing a couple of betas, and as we get user feedback from that as well as other sources (including this blog, usability studies, etc.), we may tweak some designs.

Let me try to answer some of the specific questions:

Biff - The name box displays the same contents as in Excel 2003, which does not include named formulas. We do have some new name management UI (coming in a post this week) though.

Jim – We have added logic to not push the active cell off the screen when users are moving the formula bar, which I personally think works quite well. Good point about the different window states – I will take a look.

Harlan – No, we have not added a setting to get rid of the name box. Also, we will never expand or collapse the formula bar without explicit user action, and we give the user control over how much space they want to devote to cell text. Part of the reason we chose to not automatically collapse the formula bar is that we don’t know the user’s intention – they may be selecting another cell with a just as much text to edit.

Simon – No change on the pasting text behaviour. The 8k limit applies to array formulas. The 255 formula arguments will be accessible to XLLs (I will put down XLLs as a topic for later). Good question on C# - we are working on that now.

mschaef – No news to announce there.

headtoadie - No changes in this area either.

re: Meet the Excel 12 formula bar, or “don’t hijack my grid!”

headtoadie — Thu, 20 Oct 2005 00:12:13 GMT

While on the topic of Formula Bar, would it be possible to have it stop assuming everything entered without a preceding sign (+, - , =) is text? I mean it's a spreadsheet for goodness sakes!! By default it should assume everything entered is a number or a formula unless explicitly preceded by a quote or single quote to indicate text.

re: Meet the Excel 12 formula bar, or “don’t hijack my grid!”

mschaef — Wed, 19 Oct 2005 22:57:51 GMT

"I wonder how skewed the sampling of user feedback/requests with respect to the 'formula bar experience' was if many (most?) of the people who work with long/complex formulas on a daily basis long ago gave up on hoping Microsoft would make any serious improvements. "

Excel really needs two things: a way to manage editing complex formulas is one, and a way to ___simplify___ complex formulas is another.

VBA UDF's aren't great because they aren't Excel's 'native tounge'. They require another learning curve and the performance hit of calling into another language whenever they are evaluated.

Ideally (IMO), there'd be a way to add paramaters to range names. Are there any plans for such a thing in 12? :-)

re: Meet the Excel 12 formula bar, or “don’t hijack my grid!”

Harlan Grove — Wed, 19 Oct 2005 22:01:45 GMT

Rob van Gelder...

...

|AudXL.xla on my website formats/indents a

|complex formula for easier reading...

OK.

I took a different path. Modified the syntax definition from another language in my text editor, and copy/paste back & forth between it an Excel.

|Hopefully similar functionality will be

|introduced to future versions of Excel.

Indeed.

I wonder how skewed the sampling of user feedback/requests with respect to the 'formula bar experience' was if many (most?) of the people who work with long/complex formulas on a daily basis long ago gave up on hoping Microsoft would make any serious improvements.