Excel 2007 brings loads of powerful tools into the hands of basic users – which we like…
For me, the best bit about 2007 is that it truly feels like Microsoft have built it around user feedback. Every tool I use frequently has been improved and brought to the forefront of the interface…
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Filters
It is now possible (and very easy!) to filter by date, by colour, and by multiple values
Conditional formatting
Yey, we’re no longer limited to 3 conditional formats per cell!
Also, there are some fantastic condtional formatting rules styles already set up and ready to go – including:
- Traffic lights
- Colour scales
- Percentage bars
- Highlight blanks
- Highlight duplicates
…and what makes these options so powerful is using them in conjunction with the new filter by colour and sort by colour options
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Table formatting
Ever struggled trying to colour alternate rows of a table? It’s now one click away!
More power to the right-click menu
Anyone fairly IT literate will know that the right-click menu is both a time-saver and a get out of jail free card…. well now it includes all the common formatting tools – bold, italic, alignment, etc – so no more to-ing and fro-ing between the cells you want to format and the toolbars.
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The Quick Access Toolbar
This handy tool is a major timesaver and basically allows you to add any tool you like to a convenient ‘shelf’ at the top of the screen. Once added, you’ll never need to dig through menus to find it again!
What’s even better is that all you need to do in order to add a tool is simply right-click the tool’s icon and choose Add to Quick Access Toolbar – it’s that easy 🙂
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Countifs and Sumifs
For those of you that used Countif and Sumif in previous version of Excel will LOVE this…
Ever wanted to count all cells athat are this AND that AND the other?
Well, you’re in luck…That’s exactly what the new plural countifs and sumifs formulas do – allow multiple criteria
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Convenience
Every little helps right? Well now you can wrap text, apply conditional formatting and record a macro right from the home tab – no digging around in menus.
Code hinting – whenever you use a name in a function, Excel will auto-complete it and even colour code it so you know its spelt correctly. Writing a function (e.g. an IF statement) and get to a value that has numerous options – Excel 2007 provides a pop-up menu allowing you to select from the possible values
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The Watch Window
This extremely helpful tool allows you to keep an eye on the value in any specified cells – regardless of where you are in the workbook. Imagine your delving into minute detail of a individual receipts and want to keep track of the Annual Profit or the Total Receipts Amount, not a problem with Watch Window!
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