Microsoft Press First Look 2007 Microsoft Office System

76 Part II: Preparing and Producing Professional Results
In what ways does this version of Office Excel 2007 connect with what business users have
been asking for? First of all, most customers tell us that business users barely use
10 percent of the features in Office Excel 2003. Even if we do not expect every user
to use all the features available, we have made significant investments to make sure
users will find the features they need, when they need them. We also wanted to
lower the bar with some other features that today are reserved for “power users.”
Other big challenges our customers have today have to do with sharing spreadsheets
with others and keeping one version of the “truth.” They get lost in multiple
versions, and it is hard to gain control over the information. The integration with
Excel Services to save spreadsheets on the server providing Office Excel Web
Access will make many customers happy.
This release has a number of great features that give us more ways to visually represent our
data: icon sets, data bars, chart improvements, and more. What do you know about
the average user that led to the inclusion of these features? How do you think they
will be received? So far, these have been the features that got the most applause
in product demos. Data bars, icon sets, heat maps, and the other conditional formatting
capabilities are easy to understand and are easy to use. The bigger the data
set you are analyzing, the harder it is to identify trends, gaps, or red flags on which
to make business decisions. I do think that users will start overusing these capabilities
at the beginning, mainly because it brings color to the spreadsheet, but
with time, I do believe it will make a big difference for decision making. Charts are
very commonly used to communicate the analysis to others. They are pasted in
Office Word documents and Office PowerPoint slide decks. People love presenting
good-looking reports. It makes them look more professional and helps them communicate
results. Our new charts with 3-D and shadowing effects are customerready
quality and the colors automatically update according to the document
theme.
What’s it been like for you to be so involved with this major release? I am extremely
proud and happy to be a part of the Microsoft Office system 2007 release. The biggest
advantage is to be able to use it ahead of everyone else. Office Excel 2007 in
particular is probably one of the most-used software products in the world. Working
with the program management and the developer team is very rewarding. You
learn something new every day and the customer reactions are very rewarding.
Coming Next
This chapter showed off some of the biggest changes in Office Excel 2007. The next chapter
builds on the great visual enhancements theme running throughout Microsoft Office system
by taking you into the presenting realm of Office PowerPoint 2007.