In Excel 2003 you could apply table formats, such as alternating row colors, but once you added a row, the color patterns were destroyed; you had to reapply the AutoFormat. In Excel 2007, formatting is maintained when you update a table. Add, remove, or move rows, including filtering or hiding rows or columns, and the alternate coloring is -- at long last -- preserved.
Charts, Graphs, And PivotTables
One of Excel's strengths is its charting ability, and the new layouts bring the charting look into the 21st century. There are subtle changes, such as shadows and bevels, plus new color combinations that finally give your data the professional look they deserve.
While many elements in a graph are easier to control -- you can quickly change colors or apply a theme, add 3D effects, insert a legend, and superimpose a trend line -- charting is still not as simple as it should be. Some tasks remain mind-numbingly difficult, such as adding a secondary vertical axis. (A wizard or a new chart type would be so much simpler.) The good news is that once you have a chart formatted the way you want, you can save it as a chart template and apply it to other charts.
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PivotTables " that powerful analysis tool that is little understood and thus underused -- gets a makeover. The new interface lets you check boxes in addition to dragging and dropping fields within the task pane, making things a bit easier. You can add computations (sums, averages, etc.), sort data, and filter entries more directly, too.
Staying Compatible
A compatibility checker tells you if your workbook contains features that previous versions of Excel won't support. But be careful -- you'll need to remember to save a document in Excel 2003 format to maintain compatibility with other users until the new 2007 file format becomes the standard. While Microsoft has released a converter to read 2007 files in earlier versions, don't rely on your colleagues to have it installed.
If you're connected to a SharePoint server, you can save portions of a worksheet or an entire worksheet to the server, and your users can view only or change values at your direction. Likewise, you can save a worksheet file so colleagues can be sure they're updating the most recent version of the file.
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