Resources for Excel 2007

The release of Excel 2007 is now just 6 days away.

I have several resources ready for people who are upgrading or thinking about upgrading.

The new version of my Excel 2007 tip card provides a one-page map showing you all of the old Excel 2003 menus and where you can find the commands on the Excel 2007 ribbon. This is the biggest hurdle to upgrading, so I am giving the tip card away for free. Download and print it out in color, and you will be ready to find anything. The tip card is http://www.mrexcel.com/excel2007tipcard.html.

During 2005-2006, I gave away over 5 million chapters of Learn Excel from MrExcel. This was a successful promotion. It allows you to try the book before you buy it. So, I will do the same thing with the new Excel 2007 Miracles Made Easy book. The book itself won't be back from the printer until later in February, but you can start getting chapters now. Visit http://www.mrexcel.com/freebook2007/.

I've also written several books about Excel 2007 that have been published by QUE or Holy Macro! Books. Take a look through these books at http://www.mrexcel.com/excel2007.html.

Beware the Nike+iPod Shoe Chip in Airports

I was in New York last week and stopped by the incredible Apple Store in Manhattan. While browsing, I found the Nike+iPod kit. It is a tiny chip that gets implanted in the sole of your left Nike shoe. As you walk or run, it transmits information about your workout to your iPod Nano.

After writing 2500 pages in 2006, I had put on too much weight and wanted to walk more in 2007. I figured this gizmo would be a cool geeky way to find motivation to walk. I bought the chip in New York, the shoes in Tucson, and then hijacked my son's Nano to try it out. You can rack up some miles walking through airports, so I was wearing the shoes as we left for the early 6AM flight from Tucson back to Ohio.

The Apple manual warns you that the chip is sending out blue tooth signals, so you should turn it off on the airplane. I had processed this bit of information and figured I would have to deactivate the chip before boarding.

However, I was barely awake as I fed my laptop, sport coat, belt, and the shoes through the x-Ray scanner. Holy cow! The TSA lady completely freaked out. She saw a tiny electronic package hidden in the bottom of my shoe. Instead of my bags coming out of the conveyer belt, they went back into the x-Ray machine for another look. She was ready to throw me in the brig - "What do you have hidden in your shoe?". I had to quickly explain it was a workout thing. I pulled the insole out and showed her the Nike logo and explained the whole bit.

She wasn't amused. "I would advise you to NEVER put that through an airport X-Ray machine again." So - hey - if you have the Nike thing in your shoe, take the chip out before sending it through the x-ray machine.

Other than the airport snafu, this is a pretty cool device. It tracks how far you walk, the speed, the distance. When you sync with iTunes, you can send the data to Nike.com where charts will track your monthly progress, progress towards a goal, progress vs the other 3,000 males aged 40-44 who have the shoe, and more. You can set up a group of your friends and work jointly towards a mileage goal, even if you are half way around the world. If there are any other MrExcel readers who want to get fit with the Nike shoe chip, drop me a note and we can set up a MrExcel group. Bill at MrExcel.com...

Walt Mossberg on Excel 2007

The Wall Street Journal's Walt Mossberg weighed in on Office 2007 in his January 4, 2007 Personal Technology column. This is about as nice of a review that Walt could write for a Microsoft product, but I think he completely missed the boat on several fronts.

I am guessing Walt uses Word daily and never goes into Excel.

The real story in Excel 2007 is the 1.1 million rows. That is 17 Billion cells, and that is just on Sheet 1!. Microsoft changed the way they access memory so you can actually build a fast pivot table based on a million rows and experience fast response times. There are a dozen other great features in Excel 2007, but the 1.1 million rows is the real story.

Walt completely misses this fact. In his review he even suggests changing your settings to save files in the old Office 2003 format, a format which BLOCKS access to rows 65,537 through 1,048,576. Bad move.

Walt has many nice things to say about the ribbon. You can do some commands now in 2-3 clicks instead of 14 clicks in Office 2003.

But he says the menu changes could have people annoyed at best, and furious at worst. Walt was "cursing the program for weeks" trying to find commands. Come on, Walt. Yes - it is annoying on day 1. Yes - the Pivot Table command should be on the Data tab and not the Insert tab. But as Jerry Pournelle pointed out, once you find an item once, you realize it is in a logical place and you will be able to find it again quickly. For the people who have never discovered more than 5% of Excel, the Ribbon will let them find features easily. For the Excel gurus, all of the old keyboard shortcuts, even the ones to access the non-existent menu items, still work.

I wouldn't let them install Office 2007 on your machine on the day you have a critical deadline due. Wait until you are done closing the books for the month. After a couple of days of solid use, you will be able to find your way around the ribbon.

Excel 2007 hits store shelves on January 30, 2007.