Problems between 2002/2003

[Brenda from Michigan]

Numerous people using Excel 2002 work on a document with many tabs. The
information is data with some calculations such as SUM, PER CENT, etc., but
otherwise pretty basic. Would we anticipate potential problems if one
individual working on this document has Excel 2003?

 

[Bernard Liengme]

The Excel 2007 user must always save as in Excel 97-2003 format
She must not exceed the column and row max of Excel 2003
He must not use any of the new Excel functions SUMIF, COUNTIFS, AVERAGEIF
and AVERAGEIFS
She must not use conditional formatting with more that three rules
If he is an average user who has come form Excel 2003 I cannot see that
he/she will cause any problem
You might expect XL 2007 to issue warnings about incompatible features but
if the user has obey the rules above, then all should be wee. I do it all
the time - open a XLS file in XL2007 work on it and save as XLS.

 

[Brenda from Michigan]

Thanks for the reply, but we do not have any users with Excel 2007. We are
only concerned about 2002/2003. It sounds like we should not have problems
with 2002/2003???? I'm just looking for confirmation of that information.

 

[Gord Dibben]

No problems anticipated.


Gord Dibben MS Excel MVP

 

[Bernard Liengme]

The eyesight is not what is was!

There is essentially no difference between XL2002 and XL2003
This is what John Walkenbach had to say when it was released
"The new features in this version are: (a) improved support for XML, (b) a
new "list range" feature, (c) Smart Tag enhancements, and (d) corrected
statistical functions. Most users will not find the upgrade worthwhile."

Note items (b) and (d). Your user should no make Excel Lists using the
command Data | Lists

You might find stats functions giving different results from XL2002 but only
with very 'odd' data. For example XL2002 could not find the standard
deviation of 10000000001,10000000002, 10000000003. It gave a totally 'silly'
answer while XL2003 gets it right

So other than some small technically things you can expect smooth sailing!

best wishes

 

[Brenda from Michigan]

Thanks!

No problems anticipated.


Gord Dibben MS Excel MVP