There. Ive said it. Let me say it again The Ribbon is Cool. Wow. I havent heard anyone actually say that. We dont adjust well to change and the ribbon is completely new. Yes it is maddening at first, but they really used the Customer Experience Improvement Program data to find those commands that are really popular yet were hidden deep with the Excel 2003 menu. Lets face it how many amazing commands in Excel 2003 were hidden deep behind flyout menus and obscure dialog boxes. In Episode 654, I will take a look at some of the improvements in Excel 2007s ribbon interface.
This blog is the video podcast companion to the book, Learn Excel 97-2007 from MrExcel. Download a new two minute video every workday to learn one of the 377 tips from the book!
This blog is the video podcast companion to the book, Learn Excel 97-2007 from MrExcel. Download a new two minute video every workday to learn one of the 377 tips from the book!
Transcript of the video:
Hey! Welcome back to the MrExcel netcast.
I'm Bill Jelen.
This week, we're taking a look at Excel 2007.
I'm so far...
I've shown off some pretty cool features.
Now, the one thing that I hear a lot is people complaining about the Ribbon.
They say hey this new user interface.
It's really tough for us to find anything, and yeah! I agree.
It's kind of tough the file menu doesn't have the word file.
That's kind of strange.
So, a whole bunch of important stuff up here, behind this round dot like print people say well, how can you print?
Underneath the file menu, they replace the word file with an unintelligible symbol.
Who knows?
But they really went through a lot of scientific research, to create the ribbon and you'll find things that are just amazing.
For example, let's say that you have a large data set.
So, I have some data here, and there's one column with really, really long data.
So, in column C, I have really, really, really long data.
You know, this is an annoying data set and what I would typically do back in Excel 2003 is I would turn on wrap text, in column C.
Excel 2003 think about that, that's format, cells alignment, wrap text. [ OK ] That's five clicks just to wrap text in column C.
Well, Microsoft was doing a scientific study with over a million participants.
Over which commands are used most frequently and wrap text was one that came up.
Now, wrap text is interesting there was never a way to get an icon on your toolbar in Excel 2003.
It just, wasn't available.
You couldn't turn on wrap text with a single click, well look they've now added a brand new button here that's called wrap text.
That's right on the home Ribbon, very, very easy to use, okay!
Now, every time that I would ever wrap text in Excel 2003.
I would then discover, that I need to change the vertical alignment of all those cells and so I would choose columns A and B, and then go to format cells, alignment, vertical top [ OK ] and do the exact same thing for columns D and E.
If you're counting this is 17 clicks to solve this very simple problem of too much data in Column C.
Well, right next to wrap text, they've now given us a button called align top.
So, I simply select the data choose align top and now in four clicks choose wrap text, once select the data choose align top.
I can completely solve this problem that used to take 17 clicks in Excel 2003.
That's just one example of things, where they saw commands were being used very, very frequently that maybe are not in the old toolbars and the formatting toolbars, standard toolbar.
They've now promoted them, given us an icon and basically put the icons right next to each other.
So, it's very, very easy to go through.
So, while you're hearing a lot of people complaining initially, they switch over to the new Excel.
They can't find things.
You get over that in a couple of days or a week and then you'll discover that they really have a lot of very intelligent new features in this ribbon.
So, give it a shot, give it a day or two.
Now, there's a couple of tools out there, of course I have the laminated tip card that will map the old menus, to the ribbon you can download that for free.
Right from the homepage of MrExcel.
There's a couple of utilities $16 or $29.
You can put the old menu back in there.
You know if you want to go that way, that's great!
You'll find yourself eventually though figuring out, where everything is and you'll be able to use this new menu much, much faster than the old menu.
So, that concludes our week taking a look at Excel 2007.
We'll be back on Monday answering more of your questions.
Questions that were sent in.
If you have a question for the podcast, send it to bill@MrExcel.com, and we'll get to you in a future podcast.
Thanks for stopping by, we'll see you next time for another netcast from MrExcel.
I'm Bill Jelen.
This week, we're taking a look at Excel 2007.
I'm so far...
I've shown off some pretty cool features.
Now, the one thing that I hear a lot is people complaining about the Ribbon.
They say hey this new user interface.
It's really tough for us to find anything, and yeah! I agree.
It's kind of tough the file menu doesn't have the word file.
That's kind of strange.
So, a whole bunch of important stuff up here, behind this round dot like print people say well, how can you print?
Underneath the file menu, they replace the word file with an unintelligible symbol.
Who knows?
But they really went through a lot of scientific research, to create the ribbon and you'll find things that are just amazing.
For example, let's say that you have a large data set.
So, I have some data here, and there's one column with really, really long data.
So, in column C, I have really, really, really long data.
You know, this is an annoying data set and what I would typically do back in Excel 2003 is I would turn on wrap text, in column C.
Excel 2003 think about that, that's format, cells alignment, wrap text. [ OK ] That's five clicks just to wrap text in column C.
Well, Microsoft was doing a scientific study with over a million participants.
Over which commands are used most frequently and wrap text was one that came up.
Now, wrap text is interesting there was never a way to get an icon on your toolbar in Excel 2003.
It just, wasn't available.
You couldn't turn on wrap text with a single click, well look they've now added a brand new button here that's called wrap text.
That's right on the home Ribbon, very, very easy to use, okay!
Now, every time that I would ever wrap text in Excel 2003.
I would then discover, that I need to change the vertical alignment of all those cells and so I would choose columns A and B, and then go to format cells, alignment, vertical top [ OK ] and do the exact same thing for columns D and E.
If you're counting this is 17 clicks to solve this very simple problem of too much data in Column C.
Well, right next to wrap text, they've now given us a button called align top.
So, I simply select the data choose align top and now in four clicks choose wrap text, once select the data choose align top.
I can completely solve this problem that used to take 17 clicks in Excel 2003.
That's just one example of things, where they saw commands were being used very, very frequently that maybe are not in the old toolbars and the formatting toolbars, standard toolbar.
They've now promoted them, given us an icon and basically put the icons right next to each other.
So, it's very, very easy to go through.
So, while you're hearing a lot of people complaining initially, they switch over to the new Excel.
They can't find things.
You get over that in a couple of days or a week and then you'll discover that they really have a lot of very intelligent new features in this ribbon.
So, give it a shot, give it a day or two.
Now, there's a couple of tools out there, of course I have the laminated tip card that will map the old menus, to the ribbon you can download that for free.
Right from the homepage of MrExcel.
There's a couple of utilities $16 or $29.
You can put the old menu back in there.
You know if you want to go that way, that's great!
You'll find yourself eventually though figuring out, where everything is and you'll be able to use this new menu much, much faster than the old menu.
So, that concludes our week taking a look at Excel 2007.
We'll be back on Monday answering more of your questions.
Questions that were sent in.
If you have a question for the podcast, send it to bill@MrExcel.com, and we'll get to you in a future podcast.
Thanks for stopping by, we'll see you next time for another netcast from MrExcel.
