Early feedback on Excel 2010

Posted by John Stokdyk PM | on Thu, 10/09/2009 - 15:47 4273 2 comments

Those who signed up to take a look at Microsoft’s Technical Preview of Office 2010 have started to feedback their thoughts not just to the developer, but to the wider user community via blogs and news reports. John Stokdyk collects together some initial impressions.

As previously reported, Excel 2007 was the focus for some major changes, including the notorious Ribbon interface that is being extended to the entire Office family. As we previously reported, compared to the overhaul last time round, there’s not much new to report about in Excel 2010.

If you haven’t had much experience with the Office 2007 Ribbon yet, you’ll spend so much time trying to find familiar tools and commands in the 2010 edition that you are unlikely to have much time or patience for many of the new features.

The main user interface has been tweaked slightly, so the big Strepsil-like Office lozenge is now a small, green retangle (referred to by one US commentator as a “Chicklet”). Somewhat disconcertingly, Help is also much harder to locate - the tiny circular question mark on the Home menu ribbon is far less prominent and immediate than the old search dialogue box.

But moaning about the Ribbon doesn’t give much of an impression about what’s new and useful in Excel 2010. Migrating between old and new versions has always been a tedious chore, solved in the 2003/2007 episode by Microsoft’s free conversion tool.

Excel 2010 is a little smarter - if it notices you’ve opened an Excel 2003 file it will let you know, but will then default to save it back into the same format. Native 2010 files will default to .xlsx, with a multitude of other Save As options also available from the pull down menu.

Keep an eye on ExcelZone in the coming months for more Excel 2010 coverage from the here and abroad.

Continued...

What about MS Query?

steve tees | Sat, 12/09/2009 - 13:51 | Permalink

So far, just looks like tweaks - nothing to really justify an upgrade. Do you know if MS are doing anything about MS Query, which is appears unchanged from pre-2003?

"a tedious chore"

nhopkins | Wed, 16/09/2009 - 01:16 | Permalink

"Migrating between old and new versions has always been a tedious chore, solved in the 2003/2007 episode by Microsoft’s free conversion tool"

Please explain what you mean by "solved in the 2003/2007 episode". The required solution would have been to give the user (=paying customer) a choice about whether to stay with the familiar interface or to switch to the counter-intuitive, inefficient, confused and un-productive new ribbon interface (yes, I know its all been said before but it doesn't make it any less true). I would be delighted if there had been a solution, but, as far as I am aware, the only solution has been to stay with Excel 2003.

I will be interested to see what the ribbon customisation options are, but I am not optimistic.

For now I will be sticking with Excel 2003 and (increasingly) Open Office and maybe Google Apps as Microsoft sails off into the sunset oblivious of the needs of its customers.