Goodbye Excel 97

[XL-Dennis]

Hi folks,

I finally decided to uninstall Excel 97 and put it in the "Excel museum" where I also store versions 2.1 D, 3.0, 4.0 and 95/5.0 :)

While I'm on the subject to drop versions I've also decided to drop Excel 2002 which, at least for me, seems to be the most anonymous version of Excel...

Yes, I'm now running Excel 2007 but I still claim that Excel 2000 is the most stable and reliable version of them all ;)

Do You still have old versions installed and in use?

[Zack Barresse]

Hi Dennis,

I also am using 2007 as my primary, although I do keep around 2003 and 2000. Currently version 9 is not installed (it was until recently) but it will be sooner or later (when I get myself to do it). :)

[XL-Dennis]

Hi Zack :)

Interesting to learn that You also maintain 2000, 2003 and 2007. However, in case You will start to develop with VSTO You need to keep 2003 and 2007 separated.

[Brandtrock]

Hey Dennis,

I still have '97, 2000 and 2003 on my machine. I never had 2002 and will probably wait on 2007 for a while.

Regards,

[Zack Barresse]

2002 (IMHO) was pretty much a waste of time. I don't even know why they came out with it. 2003 does not have much more functionality than 2002. Outlook had the biggest upgrade with that version change, which I did like for the better. I refuse to use 97. Dennis is correct (IMHO) that 2000 was the most stable version; I do have a lot of faith in 2003 though.

[XLGibbs]

I long ago ditched 97, my office is on 2000 and it does seem more stable than the others I have tried/used. I have 2007 and 2000 at home, but since so few people are using 2007, I haven't had too much time to play around with the VBA and such with it.

What blows my mind about 2007 is that Excel doesn't require ODBC data sources for external data (which would make life a load easier at work since I had to write an install package to set the registry keys to add the source data for most of my excel to server based stuff). What is odd to me is that Access still requires the ODBC for linked data sources. And of course, none of office 2007 works with SQL 2005. Nice!

[Bob Phillips]

I seem to differ here in that I like XP/2002 best of all. I agree it is not much different than 2000, but enough to make it my first choice. I still maintain 97/2000/2002/2003 and I have installed 2007 for my own use, I just cannot afford to say that I won't use any of them.

Dennis, what do you mean by ... in case You will start to develop with VSTO You need to keep 2003 and 2007 separated?

[Ken Puls]

Hi guys,

I still use 97 at work, so will still work with it until we upgrade early in the new year. I suspect that we will go to 2003, though, not 2007.

I have 2007 on my main machine, but have 2003 in a virtual PC for testing solutions. If I need to install others for testing, I'll do so. (I just made the move to Vista a month ago though, which is why the rest aren't on my PC right now.)

[matthewspatrick]

I've never bothered with keeping multiple versions of Excel available. I cut my teeth on Excel 97 and loved it; I loved Excel 2000 even more, and stayed with it until deep into 2005, when I went to Excel 2002. About the only cool thing I could say for XL2002 was the "Intellisense" it offered for worksheet functions; I saw no compelling reason to upgrade. In October I moved to XL2003; again, I saw nothing new in XL2003 to justify an upgrade path from XL2000.

I have not tried XL2007 yet; I did not want to get in trouble with our IT support if I ran into difficulties. I am eager to see it, but to be honest I have some mixed feelings about some of the neater features:

On 1MM+ rows... Potentially a great thing, but it will also mean more stuff gets done in Excel even though a db is the better app
On 16K+ columns... Again, potentially great, but will also result in some horrendous design decisions
On more nesting levels for worksheet formulae... This will lead to even more incomprehensible formulae and further hinder any efforts to audit worksheet qualityThat said, I am very keen to see the improvements in Conditional Formatting!