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Microsoft Office Excel 2007 is a powerful tool you can use to create and format spreadsheets, and analyze and share information to make more informed decisions. With the Microsoft Office Fluent user interface, rich data visualization, and PivotTable views, professional-looking charts are easier to create and use than in Excel 2003. Office Excel 2007, combined with Excel Services, a technology included with Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007, provides significant improvements for sharing data with greater security. You can share sensitive business information more broadly with enhanced security with your coworkers, customers, and business partners. By sharing a spreadsheet using Office Excel 2007 and Excel Services, you can navigate, sort, filter, input parameters, and interact with PivotTable views directly on the Web browser.

Excel 2007 features significant improvements over Excel 2003. These include:

• Results-oriented User Interface. A results-oriented user interface makes it easy to work in Microsoft Office Excel 2007. Commands and features that were often buried in complex menus in Excel 2003 and toolbars are easier to find on task-oriented tabs that contain logical groups of commands and features. Many dialog boxes are replaced with drop-down galleries that display the available options, and descriptive tooltips or sample previews are provided to help you choose the right option.
• More Rows, Columns, and Other Limits. Excel 2007 supports up to 1 million rows and 16 thousand columns per worksheet. This represents 1,500% more rows and 6,300% more columns than Excel 2003. Instead of 4 thousand types of formatting, you can use an unlimited number in the same workbook, and the number of cell references per cell are increased from 8 thousand to limited by available memory. For improved performance, memory management has been increased from 1 GB of memory in Microsoft Office Excel 2003 to 2 GB in Office Excel 2007. Because Office Excel 2007 supports multiple processors and multithreaded chipsets, calculations are faster in large, formula-intensive worksheets.
• Rich Conditional Formatting. In Excel 2007, conditional formatting lets you visually annotate your data for both analytical and presentation purposes. To find exceptions and to spot important trends in your data, you can implement and manage multiple conditional formatting rules that apply rich visual formatting in the form of gradient colors, data bars, and icon sets to data that meets those rules.
• Easy Formula Writing. Improvements in formula writing include a resizable formula bar with more levels of nesting, function autocomplete for completing formula arguments, the ability to manage multiple named ranges in a central location, and structured references. In addition to cell references, Office Excel 2007 provides structured references that reference named ranges and tables in a formula.
• OLAP Formulas and Cube Functions. When you work with multidimensional databases (such as SQL Server Analysis Services) in Office Excel 2007, you can use OLAP formulas to build complex, free form, OLAP data bound reports. Cube functions are used to extract OLAP data (sets and values) from Analysis Services and display it in a cell. OLAP formulas can be generated when you convert PivotTable formulas to cell formulas or when you use AutoComplete for cube function arguments when you type formulas.
• Improved Sorting and Filtering. In Office Excel 2007, you can quickly arrange your worksheet data to find the answers that you need by using enhanced filtering and sorting. For example, you can sort data by color and by more than 3 (and up to 64) levels. You can also filter data by color or by dates, display more than 1000 items in the AutoFilter drop-down list, select multiple items to filter, and filter data in PivotTables.
• Excel Table Enhancement. The Excel 2007 user interface makes it easy to create, format, and expand an Excel table (known as an Excel list in Excel 2003) to organize the data on your worksheet. Improved functionality for tables includes table header rows, calculated columns, automatic AutoFiltering, structured references, total rows, and table styles.
• Shared Charting. In Office 2007, charting is shared between Excel, Word, and PowerPoint. Rather than using Microsoft Graph for charting, Word and PowerPoint 2007 incorporate the charting features of Excel. Because an Excel worksheet is used as the chart data sheet for Word and PowerPoint charts, shared charting provides more functionality to Excel, including the use of formulas, filtering, sorting, and the ability to link a chart to external data sources, such as Microsoft SQL Server and Analysis Services (OLAP), for up-to-date information in your chart. The Excel worksheet that contains the data of your chart can be stored in your Word document or PowerPoint presentation, or in a separate file to reduce the size of your documents.
• Easy-to-use PivotTables. In Excel 2007, PivotTables are easier to use than in earlier versions of Excel. By using the PivotTable user interface, the information you want to view about your data is just a few clicks away—you no longer have to drag data to drop zones that aren't always an easy target. Instead, you can select the fields that you want to see in a PivotTable field list.
• Quick Connections to External Data. In Excel 2007, you do not need to know the server or database names of corporate data sources. Instead, you can use Quicklaunch to select from a list of data sources that your administrator or workgroup expert has made available for you. A connection manager in Excel allows you to view all connections in a workbook and makes it easier to reuse a connection or to substitute a connection with another one.
• Additional File Formats. Microsoft Office 2007 introduced additional file formats for Word, Excel, and PowerPoint, known as the Office Open XML formats. These file formats facilitate integration with external data sources, and also offer reduced file sizes and improved data recovery. In Excel 2007, the default format for an Excel workbook is the Office Excel 2007 XML-based file format (.xlsx). Other available XML-based formats are the Excel 2007 XML-based and macro-enabled file format (.xlsm), the file format for an Excel template (.xltx), and the macro-enabled file format for an Excel template (.xltm). In addition to the XML-based file formats, Office Excel 2007 also introduces a binary version of the segmented compressed file format for large or complex workbooks. This file format, the Office Excel 2007 Binary (or BIFF12) file format (.xls), can be used for optimal performance and backward compatibility.
• Integration with Document Management Server. Excel Services can be integrated with Document Management Server to create a validation process around Excel reports and workbook calculation workflow actions, such as a cell-based notification or a workflow process based on a complex Excel calculation. You can also use Document Management Server to schedule nightly recalculation of a complex workbook model.

Progent can provide businesses in the San Francisco Bay Area, Northern California, or select cities throughout the U.S. with an Excel specialist who can help you create state-of-the-art Excel-based applications or provide 1-on-1 training in the latest features of Excel 2007. Progent also offers custom online Excel training for individuals or groups. Progent's consultants can help your business build and maintain a secure, robust network and communications infrastructure to support your Microsoft Excel solutions.

If you are looking for a Microsoft Excel consulting specialist, call Progent at 800-993-9400 or send email to experts@progent.com.

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