Tuesday, March 6, 2012

MS Excel 2010



MS EXCEL 2010 is a spreadsheet software in the new Microsoft 2010 Office Suite. Excel allows you to store manipulate and analyzed data in organized workbooks for home and business tasks. New innovations in Excel 2010 include the enhanced data viewing features of Sparkline and Slicers.

MS Excel is a spreadsheet program that allows you to store, organize, and analyze information. In this lesson, you will learn your way around the Excel 2010 environment, including the new Backstage view, which replaces the Microsoft Button menu from Excel 2007. We will show you how to use and modify the Ribbon and the Quick Access Toolbar, and how to create new workbooks and open existing ones.


EXCEL 2010 Screen



NEW AND IMPROVED FEATURES

Sparklines

Sparklines is one of most exciting features of Excel 2010. Sparklines are tiny charts that appear within a single spreadsheet cell. Basically Sparklines are a visual way to display numbers. Sparklines help bring meaning and context to numbers being reported and, unlike a chart, are meant to be embedded into what they are describing. The advantage of Sparklines is that you can represent more chart in same amount of excel compare to actual chart.
Excel 2010 has added three kind of Sparklines Line , column and win/loss.






These are small charts that can be shown inside a cell and are linked to data in other cells.You can insert a line chart, win-loss chart or column chart type of spark line in excel 2010. They add rich information analysis capability to mundane tables or dashboards. We learn more about using them in tomorrows article.


Slicer
Slicer is another new feature on Excel 2010 which helps to filter the data in pivot tables. Pivot tables are used to summarize the data and with the introduction of Slicers, you can visually filter the data on pivot table and quickly find the data you are looking for.
This helps you dig deeper in your data with less hassle. Slicers can be moved and resized like charts. A Slicer will get updated automatically when there is any change in pivot tables. You can place Slicers anywhere you want in the excel sheet and you don’t need to move the pivot tables to do that.



Slicers are like visual filters. They are an easy way to slice and dice a pivot table (what is a pivot table – tutorial). A sample slicer at work is shown above.

Improved ribbon
First introduced in Excel 2007, the ribbon makes it easy for you to find commands and features that were previously buried in complex menus and toolbars. Although you could customize the Quick Access Toolbar in Excel 2007, it wasn’t possible to add your own tabs or groups to the ribbon. In Excel 2010, however, you can create custom tabs and groups and rename or change the order of the built-in tabs and groups.


Excel Mobile 2010 for Windows Phone 7


If you have Windows Phone 7, you can use Microsoft Office Mobile 2010 to work with your files from anywhere—whether you’re at work, at home, or on the go. Excel Mobile 2010 is part of Office Mobile and already on your phone in the Office Hub, so you don't need to download or install anything else to get started.
You can use Excel Mobile to view and edit workbooks stored on your phone, sent to you as email attachments, or hosted on a SharePoint 2010 site through SharePoint Workspace Mobile 2010. When you edit a workbook via SharePoint Workspace Mobile, you can save your changes back to the SharePoint site when you’re online.

PowerPivot For Excel Add-in

If you need to analyze large quantities of data, you can download the Microsoft SQL Server PowerPivot for Excel add-in, which adds a PowerPivot tab to the Excel ribbon.


If you need to analyze large quantities of data, you can download the Microsoft SQL Server PowerPivot for Excel add-in, which adds a PowerPivot tab to the Excel ribbon


With PowerPivot for Excel, you can import millions of rows of data from multiple data sources into a single Excel workbook, create relationships between heterogeneous data, create calculated columns and measures using formulas, build PivotTables and PivotCharts, and then further analyze the data so that you can make timely business decisions— all without requiring IT assistance.


More Themes

In Excel 2010, there are more themes and styles than ever before. These elements can help you apply professional designs consistently across your workbooks and other Microsoft Office documents. Once you select a theme, Excel 2010 does the design work. Text, charts, graphics, tables, and drawing objects all change to reflect the theme you have selected, so that all elements in your workbook visually complement one another.
 

Co-Author

One of most notable feature in Excel 2010 is co-author. With excel 2010 you can use the Excel web app to edit a workbook with your colleagues at the same time, even if they are at different location. When someone else opens and edits the workbook in the Excel web app while you have it open you’ll see the number of editors in the workbook on the status bar, at the bottom-right corner of the screen.


Protected View

Microsoft Office macros have been a glaring security problem since dinosaurs roamed the Earth (or so it seems), and Protected View is designed to finally close this vulnerability. Any Excel document or Excel-readable document with suspicious origins is automatically opened in Protected View, which means it's sandboxed with macros and add-ins disabled. You can't edit the document until you disable Protected View, but this extra step will let you read a spreadsheet without giving it free reign on your desktop. Any spreadsheet that's downloaded from the Internet or received as an email attachment is automatically shunted to Protected View upon first opening; if you enable editing once, the document is considered safe from that point forward and opens normally. Now the sales rep with the virus-encrusted laptop can't easily infect your machine by emailing you this month's order spreadsheet.


Improved Tables & Filters


When working with tables in Excel 2010, you can see the table filtering & sorting options even when you scroll down (the column headings – A,B,C… change to table headings)
Also, in Excel 2010, data filters have a nifty search option to quickly search and filter values you want. (I still prefer the excel 2003 style one click filtering).

New Screenshot Feature:


Now, using Excel (or any other Office 2010 app) you can grab a screenshot of any open window. This could be very useful for those of us in teaching industry as you can quickly embed screenshots in to your teaching material (like slides or documents).

Improved Conditional Formatting:


Excel 2010 added a lot of simple but effect improvements to conditional formatting. One of my favorites is the ability to have solid fill in a cell based on the value in it. This provides an easy way to create in-cell bar charts.

Customize Pivot Tables Quickly

Now you can easily change pivot table summary type and calculation types from Pivot Table “Options” ribbon in a click (learn how to do this in Excel 2007 and earlier).
Also you can do what-if analysis on Pivots (I am yet to try this feature).

Customize Add-ins from Developer Ribbon

In Excel 2007, if you want to customize or add a new add-in, you have to circumnavigate cape of good hope. But Excel 2010 makes it a pleasant experience again. 
There are two buttons, right on developer ribbon tab using which
 you can quickly add, change any add-ins.

Customize Ribbons and Define your own Ribbons


One the most beautiful and powerful features about Office products is that you can customize them as you want. You could easily add menus, change labels, and define toolbars the way you like to work. It made us feel a little powerful and awesome. Then, for some reason, MS removed most of these customizations in Office 2007 leaving us frustrated and powerless. Thankfully, they restored some of that in Office 2010. In this version of office, you can easily add new ribbons or customize existing ribbons (by adding new groups of tools)

One File Menu to Rule them all


One of the biggest WTFs in Excel 2007 is Office Button. It wasn’t immediately clear for most of us, how we should save or work with existing files as everything was hidden behind the office button. Office 2010 rectified that problem beautifully by restoring “File” menu. But the engineers at MS didn’t stop there. They also added a host of other powerful features to the file menu and branded it as “backstage view”.


COMPARISON OF MS EXCEL 2007 AND 2010
  • Chart macro recording has been fixed in 2010.  Not something to be proud of since it should not have been broken when Excel 2007 was released, and should have been fixed in an SP release.  If you need to record chart macros, which is a need if writing such macros, then you need 2010.
  • The calculation speed is a little faster.  For 99% of users, no one will notice the difference.
  • Sparklines are nice.  Maybe worth the upgrade.  They are little mini-charts.
  • Excel 2010 can be run as a 64 bit application.  But one can not install it as part of the automatic install.  One has to dig on the disk to find it.  And you need to have at least 5-10 gig of memory on your PC to significantly benefit from it.  Most PCs have at most 3 gig, which is far to little.  And few users need 64 bit Excel.  But it does sound impressive to say you are using it!
  • Microsoft improved statistical, financial, and math functions and the wizard interface in 2010. We're glad the functions are better, but upgrade only if you are aware of a problem with functions in your older copy of Excel or if you need a function that is not in your copy of Excel.
  • Fill patterns which were removed in 2007 are back.  Howeve do not upgrade just to get fill patterns back.  A quick search on the internet will find several free fill pattern add-ins for Excel 2007.
  • If you are a heavy user of conditional formatting, then upgrading to 2010 should benefit you.  In 2007, a lot of conditional formatting would bring Excel to its knees. 



SOME ISSUES

How to resolve issue of Microsoft Excel 2010 stopped working?

Microsoft Excel 2010 is a spreadsheet application from Microsoft which has been developed for both Windows Operating System and Mac OS. Microsoft Excel 2010 offers several features such as graphing tools, calculations, pivot table and Visual Basics for Applications (macro programming language). It delivers rich enhanced features to make the program simple and easy to use. Using Microsoft Excel 2010 we can manage, analyze and share informations in different ways to make smart decisions. Microsoft Excel 2010 also offers tools such as data analysis and visualization tools, high quality charts and graphs etc. But sometimes Microsoft Excel 2010 stops functioning and displays the error “Microsoft Excel 2010 has stopped working”.
Some of the possible reasons for the error “Microsoft Excel has stopped Working” and different methods to resolve the error are given below:
  • Possible Reasons
  • ‘Safe Mode with Networking’
  • Change the default Printer

Possible Reasons

Microsoft Excel 2010 will sometime display the error “Microsoft Excel has stopped working”. There are several reasons for this error and we can get rid of these problems by making some changes in the settings. The presence of third party tools such as antivirus programs may generate errors with Microsoft Excel 2010. Add-ins of Microsoft Excel 2010 sometime generates these types of errors. Some settings you have made in the printer also cause the errors with Microsoft Excel 2010.

‘Safe Mode with Networking’

The presence of third party tools sometime makes conflicts with Microsoft Excel 2010 and result in the error “Microsoft Excel 2010 has stopped working”. The most common method to resolve these types of errors is restarting the system in ‘Safe mode with networking’. When we start the system in ‘Safe mode with networking’, the system will access only basic drivers and files. We can restart the system in ‘Safe Mode’ by pressing ‘F8′ button continuously while booting. If the problem is with the add-ins of Microsoft Excel 2010 then restarting Microsoft Excel in ‘Safe Mode’ by pressing ‘Ctrl’ key during startup will fix the issue.
Change the default Printer
The settings you have made to the printer sometimes results in dysfunctional Microsoft Excel 2010. We can get rid of these issues by changing the default printer. In order to change it, select ‘Start’ menu and open the ‘Control Panel’. Then click on ‘Hardware and sound’ and select ‘Device and printers’. To change the default printer right click on ‘Microsoft XPS Document Writer’ and select ‘Set as Default Printer’. A checkmark is displayed on the printer icon to change the default printer.
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REFLECTION

  Microsoft Excel 2010 offers Excellent features to analyze, manage and share information in more ways than ever before. It helps to make better, smarter decision and the files can easily be uploaded to the web and simultaneously, the user can work online. The new data analysis and visualization tool help to track and highlight important data trends. Data can be accessed from any web browser. Users can run spreadsheets in browsers and it can be published to the browser via the desktop version. The Excel browser version has limited features and offers more in-depth functionality than Google spreadsheets. It has innovative features called Sparklines which gives a visual snapshot image of a data trend over the time within a cell. It share Excel via browser with other users and set special permissions on accessing the document. If you are producing financial reports or managing personal expenses, it gives more efficiency and flexibility to accomplish the goals. 
  In MS Excel 2010 we can create data chart in a single cell. Have a quick filter enhancement. Have an efficient model & analyze any data. Can access spreadsheet from anywhere at anytime. Can add more sophistication to data presentations. Have an  interactive & dynamic PivotCharts. And also have a Easy & fast accessing.




6 comments:

  1. i learned a lot in this MS excel 2010 with this blog..
    very informative.. tnx for this :)

    ReplyDelete
  2. nice color combination of the background,
    informative and readable.

    ReplyDelete
  3. well done.
    you made it impressive and at the same time informative.
    keep it up :)

    ReplyDelete
  4. This excel really help us in the field of computation. I like the new tools about editing and formating a chart.
    I always use this office in my computation. It's great to have an improvement.

    ReplyDelete
  5. i agreed on the other comments.
    its looks informative and at the same time very attractive. this excel help us in the field of computation. this blog, well discuss the new and improve features of this new version. very impressive.

    ReplyDelete
  6. i was disappointed on the first topic.. but now, im impressed.
    you discussed it well, full of knowledge.
    well done :)

    ReplyDelete