Excel 2007 . . . Arrrgh

[Cyberdude]

I just got a new super duper Dell computer complete with Windows 7 and (ugh!) Excel 2007. Maybe it's just me, but it appears that Microsoft had just one objective when it revised Excel . . . completely ruin it! I feel that the Excel developments I've done during the last 10 to 15 years are all useless now. What could they have been thinking??

My question is, does anyone know where I can buy a legitimate copy of Excel 2003? Even better, is there a way for me to transfer my copy from my old computer to my new one?

I'm telling you, I am just sick about what Excel 2007 has become.

[Bob Phillips]

If it is an OEM licence, it goes with the machine. If it is a independent purchase, you can remove from one and move to the other.

The only place you will get 2003 now is on eBay I would have thought.

But you might as well persevere with 2007, 2010 is around the corner, and it uses the same GUI etc.

[Cyberdude]

Thanx for the reply. XLD. Am I the only one who is suffering with Excel 2007? I just don't have the time to adapt to it. Phffft!

[Bob Phillips]

No you are not, many have before you and many will after you. But, all Excel's will be like this from now on.

[Paul_Hossler]

FWIW, I've heard that the better a person was with the old Excel, the harder it is to move to the RibbonX (2007) Excel.

After a little (OK, a lot) of use, I can remember where the 2007 commands are, and in some ways the Ribbon is better

Actually, it's not the Ribbon so much, as the Themes that drive me crazy.

On the VBX Ribbon forum, there's a lot of references to using and customizing the Ribbon, but also links to a series of Office Product specific "Now where did they put it?" workbooks.

However, I did hear that they long range MS plan is to retire VBA and replace it with Visual Studio

Paul

[Bob Phillips]

I think it is not familiarity/expertness with old Excel, but just how adaptable/willingness to adapt the individual is. Of course, that is not the same as saying that 2007 s good, the ribbon is a poor GUI in my opinion, there is far too much emphasis on style over true functionality, there are too many silly icons (and 2010 gets even worse), Conditional Formatting is a mess now, the Names Manager is an impotent pretender to the real NameManager, charts are badly damaged, and so on and so on.

But there are some good things, tables are great, pivot tables are getting better with external data, cube functions are great, the new formulas are good (even though there are far too few, and of course they are not backward compatible). Unfortunately, 2010 does nothing to improve those bad things IMO, and does not create extra functionality where it is needed.

All in all, 2007 looks as though it was driven by the wrong goals, but it has happened, we need to accept that and keep addressing the things that can be changed, looking to persuade MS aboiut what is really needed.

[Bob Phillips]

Oh, BTW, on VBA. Of course it has been know ever since .Net came in that MS would like to ditch VBA. Unortunately for them, they don't have a proper roadmap yet that they have published to achieve that, and if they were to make a release without such a path it would be the smallest selling Excel of all time, there are too many businesses running on VBA that CANNOT live without it. They also have to address the deployment issue, it just won't work providing ONLY a .Net solution that IT can deploy, they have to cater for the small businesses as well.

[stanl]

Hopefully not too tangential... I was informed we will move to OpenOffice. In order to get a wider audience OO does work with COM and the UNO Bridge stuff is not that difficult to master. My only experience with 2007 was to read the xml directly. As for the VBA/.NET/VB stuff - I think macros are on the way out. Too many security problems. A spreadsheet is a spreadsheet, not a code repository and there are enough 3rd pary scripting tools (VBS,KIX,Ruby,Winbatch,Powershell,Rexx,WHS/Perlscript) to balance the equation. .02 Stan