Friday, December 4, 2009

Microsoft Office 2010 in Beta State

 

For all office lovers, users and those who hate as well there is a news about the new version of Microsoft Office. Yes you heard it right. Though many of us do have developed the comfort with the Office 2007 Microsoft is about to release Office 2010.

But not to worry. Microsoft Office is in Beta State as of now and is available for download in case you wish to evaluate and contribute to the features of the Microsoft Office. The download is available in two flavors as listed below…

  1. Microsoft Office 2010 Developers download
  2. Microsoft Office 2010 IT Professionals download

Needless to describe which download is intended for which audience. For Microsoft lovers this is certainly a good news. And for all those anti-Microsoft the new opportunity to find holes and vulnerability in the new program.

To grab a beta testing copy of Microsoft Office 2010 please visit www.microsoft.com or Click here.

I hope you found the information useful and Thank you for reading.

Thursday, December 3, 2009

Making your Excel 2007 files backward compatible

 

While working with Excel 2007 several users have been inadvertently creating files that are not compatible with the older version of MS Excel e.g. 2003, 97 etc. One way to ensure that you workbook is compatible with the older version you need to Save your workbook in appropriate Excel format that recipient of the file is expected to have or use the compatibility checker tool on your workbook so that you can fix potential issues.

To ensure that a MS Office Excel 2007 workbook does not have compatibility issues that may cause loss of some or several functionality in an earlier version of Excel, you must run the Compatibility Checker tool unless you are already working on a file created in earlier version of MS Excel. The Compatibility Checker tool discovers any potential compatibility issues and can create a report for you. Follow the below instructions to use Excel 2007’s Compatibility Checker tool…

  • In Office Excel 2007, open the workbook that you want to check for compatibility.
  • Click Microsoft Office Button (image )
  • Click Prepare
  • Click Run Compatibility Checker.
  • To ensure the Compatibility is checked for every time you save the workbook, select the Check compatibility when saving this workbook check box.
  • To create a report in a separate worksheet of all the issues that are listed in the Summary box, click Copy to New Sheet.
  • Clicking Fix button may resolve some simple compatibility issues.

I hope you found the information useful and Thank you for reading.

Files Types and Excel 2007


Excel 2007 supports several file type for editing or opening workbook files created in other program. It can also convert excel files into other file types compatible with such programs. Below tables lists various files type supported by MS Excel 2007 under following categories….

  • MS Excel Formats
  • Text Formats
  • Clipboard Formats
  • Other Formats

Note: If you save a workbook in Text, CSV, Image type or any other format there may be loss for functionality available in the original file.

Excel Format

Format Extension Description
Excel Workbook .xlsx XML-based file format.
Note: It cannot store VBA macro code or MS Excel 4.0 macro sheets (.xlm).
Excel Workbook (code) .xlsm XML-based, macro-enabled file format. Unlike .xlsx file format it can store VBA macro code or Excel 4.0 macro sheets (.xlm).
Excel Binary Workbook .xlsb MS Excel 2007 Binary file format (BIFF12).
Template .xltx Excel 2007 file format for an Excel template. It does not store VBA macro code or Excel 4.0 macro sheets (.xlm).
Template (code) .xltxm Excel 2007 macro-enabled Excel template file format that can store VBA macro code or Excel 4.0 macro sheets (.xlm).
Excel 97- Excel 2003 Workbook .xls The Excel 97 - Excel 2003 Binary file format (BIFF8).
Excel 97- Excel 2003 Template .xlt The Excel 97 - Excel 2003 Binary file format (BIFF8) for an Excel template.
MS Excel 5.0/95 Workbook .xls The Excel 5.0/95 Binary file format (BIFF5).
XML Spreadsheet 2003 .xml XML Spreadsheet 2003 file format (XMLSS).
XML Data .xml XML Data format.
Excel Add-In .xlam Excel 2007’s XML-based macro-enabled Add-In (a supplemental program that is designed to run additional code) that supports VBA projects & Excel 4.0 macro sheets (.xlm).

 

Text Formats

Format Extension Description
Formatted Text (Space-delimited) .prn Lotus space-delimited format. It can store only the active sheet.
Text (Tab-delimited) .txt Saves a workbook as a tab-delimited text file. It can store only the active sheet.
Text (Macintosh) .txt Saves a workbook as a tab-delimited text file. It can store only the active sheet.
Text (MS-DOS) .txt Saves a workbook as a tab-delimited text file. It can store only the active sheet.
Unicode Text .txt Saves a workbook as Unicode text, a character encoding standard that was developed by the Unicode Consortium.
CSV (comma delimited) .csv Saves a workbook as a tab-delimited text file. It can store only the active sheet.
CSV (Macintosh) .csv Saves a workbook as a tab-delimited text file. It can store only the active sheet.
CSV (MS-DOS) .csv Saves a workbook as a tab-delimited text file. It can store only the active sheet.
DIF .dif Data Interchange Format. Saves only the active sheet.
SYLK .slk Symbolic Link Format. Saves only the active sheet.

Clipboard Formats

Format Extension Clipboard type Identifiers
Picture .wmf or .emf Pictures in Windows Metafile Format (WMF) or Windows Enhanced Metafile Format (EMF).
    Note    If you copy a Windows metafile picture from another program, Excel pastes the picture as an enhanced metafile.
Bitmap .bmp Pictures stored in Bitmap format (BMP).
Microsoft Excel file formats .xls Binary file formats for Excel versions 5.0/95 (BIFF5), Excel 97-2003 (BIFF8), and Office Excel 2007 (BIFF12).
SYLK .slk Symbolic Link Format.
DIF .dif Data Interchange Format.
Text (tab-delimited) .txt Tab-separated text format.
CSV (Comma-delimited) .csv Comma-separated values format.
Formatted text (Space-delimited) .rtf Rich Text Format (RTF). Only from Excel.
Embedded object .gif, .jpg, .doc, .xls, or .bmp Microsoft Excel objects, objects from properly registered programs that support OLE (OLE: A program-integration technology that you can use to share information between programs. All Office programs support OLE, so you can share information through linked and embedded objects.)
Linked object .gif, .jpg, .doc, .xls, or .bmp OwnerLink, ObjectLink (ObjectLink: An OLE data format that describes a linked object, identifying the class, document name, and name of an object. Each of these data items; is a null-terminated string.), Link, Picture, or other format.
Office drawing object .emf Office drawing object format or Picture (Windows enhanced metafile format, EMF).
Text .txt Display Text, OEM Text.
HTML .htm Hypertext Markup Language.
    Note    When you copy text from another program, Excel pastes the text in HTML format, regardless of the format of the original text.

Other Formats

Format Extension Description
Quattro Pro 5.0 (Win) .wb1 Quattro Pro version 5.0 for Windows. You can open Quattro Pro files in Excel by using a converter. You cannot save an Excel file to Quattro Pro format.
Quattro Pro 7.0 (Win) .wb3 Quattro Pro version 7.0 for Windows. You can open Quattro Pro files in Excel by using a converter. You cannot save an Excel file to Quattro Pro format.

I hope you found the information useful and Thank you for reading.

Wednesday, December 2, 2009

Grouping Worksheets in MS Excel


I am not able to imagine the why one would want to group or ungroup worksheets in an Excel Workbook. Also have not tested this on Office 2003 platform so do not know the applicability there as of now.

Grouping Worksheet together.

One can group multiple sheets in MS Excel by selecting one or more sheet together.

  • To select a single worksheet simply click on the worksheet.
  • To select multiple adjacent sheets click on the first worksheet; Press and Hold the [Shift] key and then click the last worksheet. This will group all the worksheets together. You might have to use Tab Scrolling Buttons to navigate through worksheets tabs.
  • To select multiple non-adjacent worksheets; press and hold [Ctrl] key and click one or more non-adjacent worksheets.

Note: When you select two or more adjacent or non-adjacent worksheets together they are grouped by Excel. The status of grouped sheets are appears as [Group] in the title bar of the open worksheet.

Impact of Grouping Sheets

Grouping worksheets together changes the way excel treats grouped worksheets when editing, printing or other such operations.

  • Data being entered or edited in the active worksheet in group is reflected in all selected sheets.
    Note: The changes in active worksheet in the group apply to all worksheets that constitute the group. Hence editing a cell would replace data on the active sheet and on other sheets in group.
  • Data that you copy or cut in grouped sheets cannot be pasted on another sheet, because the size of the copy area includes all layers of the selected group and is therefore different from the paste area in a single sheet outside the group.
    Note: Make sure that only one sheet is selected before you copy or move data to another worksheet.

Ungrouping the Worksheets

To ungroup the selected worksheets right click on one of the sheet in the group and then click Ungroup Sheets in the context sensitive menu.

I hope you found the information useful and Thank you for reading.

Using Tab Scrolling Buttons in MS Excel

 

Tab Scrolling Button are nothing but the sheet navigation buttons and are used to to scroll through the available worksheets in a Microsoft Excel Workbook. When you start the MS Excel application you see three worksheets by default. However, if your workbook includes several worksheets, you would be forced to use the Sheet Navigation Button for viewing the hidden worksheets. The sheet navigation button is located at bottom left of the Excel application interface as shown Figure 1 below.

image

Figure 1

The Tab Scrolling Buttons are used to scroll through the list of available sheets in an Excel Workbook File. If you are able to see all worksheets in current view then clicking it will have no visual change in current view.

The Tab Scrolling buttons can also be used to jump to a particular worksheet without scrolling through all the sheets. In order to jump to a sheet directly right click on any of the Sheet Navigation Buttons. A list of available sheets in the Workbook is displayed in Figure 2 below.

image

Figure 2

You can click on a sheet to directly jump to that. This tip becomes handy when working on an excel workbook with several worksheets.

I hope you found the information useful and Thank you for reading.

MS Excel Editing Tips and Tricks

 

Most of us work on excel. Data entry using excel in cell at times becomes very tedious and therefore most of us prefer word when it come to editing text for the data entry. There are several quick tips and tricks available to make one’s life easy while working with MS Excel for data entry and manipulation…

Task / Objective Shortcut / Key Sequence
New Workbook [Ctrl] + [N]
Edit Current Cell [F2]
Enter multiple lines of data with line breaks the way you can type in MS Word Tables. To insert carriage return use.. [Alt] + [Enter]
Wrapping Text enter in the cell [Ctrl] + [1] + {Click Alignment Tab} + {Wrap Text}
Change Relative Cell Ref (e.g. A1) to Absolute ref. (e.g. $A$1, A$1,$A1). Relative references change when copying data from one cell to another. Absolute reference do not change.(Toggle Key) [F4]
Toggle between Show Formula Mode/Normal Mode. [Ctrl] + [`]
Close Current Workbook. Will prompt to save before closing in case of unsaved changes [Ctrl] + [w] / [Ctrl] + [F4]
Create Table and Set filters on table headers [Ctrl] + [L] Or [Ctrl] + [T]
Insert Hyperlink Dialog [Ctrl] + [K]
Auto Sum Alt + [-]
Current Date [Ctrl] + [;]
Current Time [Ctrl] + [:]
Complete Formula with parenthesis and parameters [Ctrl] + [Shift] + [A]
Delete Selected Cell [Ctrl] + [-]
Insert Blank Cell [Ctrl] + [Shift] + [=] or [Ctrl] + [+]
Insert Cut Cells above current selection [Ctrl] + [Shift] + [=] or [Ctrl] + [+]
Insert Copied Cells above current selection [Ctrl] + [Shift] + [=] or [Ctrl] + [+]
Select appropriate option and click ok
Copy data from Cell above current selection [Ctrl] + [']
Copy data from Cell above current selection along with formatting [Ctrl] + [d]
Copy Contents from Cell to the Left of current selection [Ctrl] + [R]

Happy Editing… Cheers

I hope you found the information useful and Thank you for reading.

Tuesday, December 1, 2009

MS Excel Quick Formatting Tips

 

Formatting Data in Excel take hell lot of time. It is therefore necessary for every one to know the quick key sequences. The table below lists such short cut to enable you with some quick data formatting key sequences.

Task / Objective Shortcut / Key Sequence
Cell Format Cell Dialog (Gives option for various formatting options including fonts, border, color, protection, data type etc.) [Ctrl] + [1]
Bold / Normal (Toggle Key) [Ctrl] + [2] / [Ctrl] + B
Italic / Normal (Toggle Key) [Ctrl] + [3] / [Ctrl] + I
Underline / Normal (Toggle Key) [Ctrl] + [4] / [Ctrl] + U
Strike Out / Normal (Toggle Key) [Ctrl] + [5]
Box the Current Selection [Ctrl] + [Shift] + [7] or [Ctrl] + [&]

I hope you found the information useful and Thank you for reading.