Next Version of Excel

Last week, Microsoft released a video showing the new user interface in Office 12. This has started the press buzzing about a product that is probably a year away. People are complaining that the retraining costs will outweigh the benefits.

To be sure, the changes are startling. The traditional File - Edit - Insert - View menu is gone. That is a scary prospect for the power users like those who read this website. Yesterday, at the University of Akron Power Excel seminar, the class and I spent some time at lunch to review the Excel parts of the video. The intial reaction: "I won't upgrade if there isn't the familiar menu...." However, then people started thinking about the new features. "Well - if the are more rows, I will need to upgrade..." "Really? 50 different conditional format conditions? I would love that...". Soon - a lot of the people in the room were willing to re-learn a new menu system in order to get to the new features in Excel 12.

I predict that Excel 12 will catch on much faster than any previous version of Excel since Excel 97. Next week, in Redmond I will actually see the product and can learn more. If you are interested in an advance look, surf on over to Excel Watch, where the king of spreadsheets, John Walkenbach has put together a great blog tracking Excel 12.