thrown into Excel 2010 w/o time to gear up

[jan001]

Recently at work, our ITS stepped on its collective self and somehow issued a command to wipe and re-image network computers. There are maybe 10,000 computers on the network; only 60 actually got wiped before someone caught it and hit the panic button to stop everything. Lucky me, mine was one of the 60.

So they came and re-imaged it and all of a sudden, instead of Office 2003 which I've (we've) been using for years, I have Office 2010. This is the new default image, which is good -- we need to upgrade. It's also good that I'm on the leading edge of people getting Office 2010 because once it goes out to everyone, my inbox will light up with questions. The problem is that we got no learning tools, although there's such a big difference between Excel '03 and '10.

I'm not a MS basher, really I'm not, but this change looks like a classic Microsoft move -- for the most part the functionality is unchanged, but the user interface is completely different. So I dove into it to re-learn how to do stuff I'd been doing by rote for so long.

My understanding is that the big Office changes came with the move from '03 to '07, but I've never used '07, so these changes seem pretty significant and are often extremely annoying, when I have to stop in the middle of something and find how to do it now because things aren't where they used to be. Waah waah rant rant, etc.

I'm a pretty good self-teacher, but also like to have a comprehensive book or two on hand. Any suggestions? I looked at the books for sale here -- would <em><strong>Rev Up to Excel 2010</strong></em> be a good choice? It specifically mentions that it jumps off a similar book for Excel 2007, but since I never used '07...?

What about <em><strong>Microsoft Excel 2010 in Depth</strong></em>?

Over the years, I've used everything from the Dummies books to the big fat books from Que and In-and-Out, and have benefited one way or another from all of them, so I'm open to all suggestions. Thanks in advance!

 

[GlennUK]

I used something like this for the first few months of switching from 2003 to 2007:

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/...BD-2758-47B3-9F90-93788112B985&displaylang=en

or online:
http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/e...2007-command-reference-guide-HA010149151.aspx

And I had the Tip Card printed and stuck up at eye level near my desk:
http://www.mrexcel.com/excel2007tipcard.html

That should help with the major changes ... I think that 2010 is similar to 2007 in most ways ... I believe that Ribbons are now customizable, and PivotTables have improved dramatically, as things not covered by those guides and tips.

 

[energman58]

Somewhere on this site there is a free e-book for Bill Jellen's Learn Excel 2007 as a pdf. 2007 is pretty close to 2010 (if you ignore some of the UI issues) - I think there is now an equivalent 2010 version but you probably have to pay for that and as Glenn says they are fairly close anyway.

The link in Glenn's post is to a really useful cheat sheet which shows you where they hid most of the 2003 commands which I am still using after 6 months following my forced upgrade - also if you use the keyboard shortcuts for 2003 it seems to recognise them about 95% of the time.

The big difference is in getting VBA to play nicely with the new UI - the ribbon thing makes it really hard to do things that were simple with menus; if you simply run macros you probably wont have a big problem. Also, the charting engine is pants - they added a bunch of "upgrades" which have made it much harder to use than the 2003 version and it is so slow. Frankly I'm not impressed by teh abilityto add bevels to the edges of my blocks in a bar chart if teh price of doing it is to break most of the useful bits.

 

[jan001]

Terrific resources and suggestions! I see downloading and printing in my immediate future.

I know I'm not the only one frustrated by the introduction of the ribbon. XP gave us the Fisher Price interface with its blue and orange colors, its Teletubbies default wallpaper, and its rounded corners (so we wouldn't hurt ourselves), and now in Office 2010(/2007?) we have ribbons which everyone knows are more festive than menus, and might even make us think of balloons and presents! Ooooh. /side-eye/

Nertz.

But mostly THANKS to this board, as always!