Upgrading To Excel 2010

By Author: Ed Bolton
Total Articles: 17
Comment this article

If your office is upgrading from Excel 2007 to 2010 then, relax, there aren't any major differences between the most recent versions of Microsoft's industry leading spreadsheet package. However, most workplaces prefer to do a double jump when upgrading so you may only be familiar with Excel 2003. Or 2002, the original XP version.



A lot changed when Microsoft released Office 2007 and you should be trained in the main differences. Firstly, the file formats in Excel 2010 won't be familiar. Since the release of Windows, a doc file was a Word document, and an xls file was a spreadsheet. Now spreadsheets will, by default, get saved as xlsx or even xlsm files. Excel 2010's xlsx and xlsm files are compatible with earlier versions of Excel. This is an improvement from Excel 2007 where backwards compatibility was an issue.



The main change our consultants have noticed is that 2007 and 2010 feel a lot more modern than previous versions of Excel. The reason for this is that Excel 2003 had a very limited color palette, with just 40 to choose from. There were very few reds or yellows to speak ...
... of. The good news is that 2010 has far more colors which should make your charts and tables that bit more presentable.



If you are an IT manager looking to roll out Office 2010 in your workplace, you can define themes. These are a set of formats that users can apply to all their spreadsheets at the click of a button. This makes it easy to build consistency across your company; think of it a bit like the master slide in a Powerpoint presentation.



As a user, the most eye catching change is in the menus. The old fashioned menubar has gone, and been replaced by a more visual ribbon at the top of the page. One of the issues with Excel 2003 is that half the common functions would be accessible through displayed toolbars, whereas the others would require you to trawl through all the menus until you figured out e.g. how to protect a sheet.



In fact, navigation has been given a complete overhaul. Microsoft realized users had to move the mouse to the top of the page in order to shade cells and italicize fonts. Now the most common formatting options are available above the standard cut and paste options if you right-click the mouse. Although it may be irritating having to learn your way round the new layout, it's worth it because it's quicker in the end. If you can't find anything, Excel help (press F1) should be able to point you in the right direction.



If you are an expert user handling large quantities of data, you will be pleased to note your standard spreadsheet is larger than it used to be. Excel 2003 only had 65,536 rows and 256 columns; the same number as Excel 97 despite a huge increase in computing power over that time period. Excel 2010 has over 1 million rows and, if you ever needed to use them all, you should probably consider upgrading to a more powerful database solution.



At the end of the day, it's still Microsoft Excel. It's still accessible to beginners, and it's still a useful tool for specialist developers and programmers. Microsoft have wisely decided to stick with what works and we applaud them for pursuing a policy of evolution not revolution.

About the author: Ed Bolton is the founder of Excel4Business, a service to provide Excel help.