Many of his comments are accurate, but many are not actually argued. For
instance ... Frequent user group reports of crashes and not being able to
save files ... is hardly a reasoned argument.
I think it would be hard to argue that charting is seriously flawed in 2007,
and that you either love the ribbon or you hate it, but there are serious
changes in the product that have to be objectively analysed.
The author dismisses a million rows, but clearly this has been a major user
request for many years now. It is not my idea of a major requirement, but it
clearly is for others. He also dismisses 16K columns, but most people that I
know have wanted more than 256 columns; not every day for every spreadsheet,
but certainly more. 16K may be more than we envisaged, but at least it is
more.
Table handling is changed big-time in 2007, and it is a going in the right
direction.
Conditional formatting is taken to a new level in 2007.
There are formula changes, SUMIFS, COUNTIFS, AVERAGEIF, IFERROR, etc. Whilst
I think SUMIFS, COUNTIFS is no big deal personally, they are useful, but I
like AVERAGEIF and IFERROR. And they have integrated ATP into Excel, which
is great.
Pivot tables have had a major re-vamp (not before time).
They have included a names manager (although it is nowhere near as good as
Jan Karel Pieterse's NameManager addin). Need a DV manager though IMO.
Then there are many little things, such as undo after save, improved
filtering, formula autocomplete, resizable formula bars (I love that one),
and so on.
Of course there are downsides besides those mentioned above. Macro handling
is not great but not unworkable, F4 has been severely beaten up which is a
real bummer IMO, no tear-off toolbars, and so on again.
Overall, it is a major product change. The critical thing IMO is what they
do in the next release, what they agree is broken and therefore fix, what
they add, etc. In the meantime, you have to evaluate it as such, identify
what you may need that has been lost or functionally changed, what new
functions that you can use, and from this you determine if you want to
upgrade. But many people buying Excel for the first time will get Excel 2007
de facto, so there will be a take-up regardless.
Personally, I would like to have seen an Excel release where they made the
functional changes first (tables, CF, pivots, etc.) in a stable version,
then did the strategy changes (ribbon, rows, etc.) in a further release.
This would have been a smoother transition and allowed time to bed the
functional changes and gives us a vastly improved non-ribbon version before
being asked to move on. But I can understand MS feeling that Excel needed a
headline grabbing change, and thus they did it all in one.
--
HTH
Bob
(there's no email, no snail mail, but somewhere should be gmail in my addy)