Unhappy 2007 vs. 2003 camper?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Wild Bill
  • Start date Start date
W

Wild Bill

I haven't taken the plunge myself so am asking here. I just fell onto a
site that compares 2007 vs. 2003 quite brutally. It sure goes further
than the surprisingly open (to me) article "Deprecated features for
Excel 2007" http://blogs.msdn.com/excel/archive/2006/08/24/718786.aspx .


Rather than list all of his chart I'll show the link. Do you believe it
(below) is valid? It seems the author is quite biased against 2007, but
is trying as least a little bit to be fair. Obviously he omits
multitudes of 2007 improvements. Yet are his "complaints" accurate?
http://www.add-ins.com/Excel 2003 versus 2007.htm
 
Many of his comments are accurate, but many are not actually argued. For
instance ... Frequent user group reports of crashes and not being able to
save files ... is hardly a reasoned argument.

I think it would be hard to argue that charting is seriously flawed in 2007,
and that you either love the ribbon or you hate it, but there are serious
changes in the product that have to be objectively analysed.

The author dismisses a million rows, but clearly this has been a major user
request for many years now. It is not my idea of a major requirement, but it
clearly is for others. He also dismisses 16K columns, but most people that I
know have wanted more than 256 columns; not every day for every spreadsheet,
but certainly more. 16K may be more than we envisaged, but at least it is
more.

Table handling is changed big-time in 2007, and it is a going in the right
direction.

Conditional formatting is taken to a new level in 2007.

There are formula changes, SUMIFS, COUNTIFS, AVERAGEIF, IFERROR, etc. Whilst
I think SUMIFS, COUNTIFS is no big deal personally, they are useful, but I
like AVERAGEIF and IFERROR. And they have integrated ATP into Excel, which
is great.

Pivot tables have had a major re-vamp (not before time).

They have included a names manager (although it is nowhere near as good as
Jan Karel Pieterse's NameManager addin). Need a DV manager though IMO.

Then there are many little things, such as undo after save, improved
filtering, formula autocomplete, resizable formula bars (I love that one),
and so on.

Of course there are downsides besides those mentioned above. Macro handling
is not great but not unworkable, F4 has been severely beaten up which is a
real bummer IMO, no tear-off toolbars, and so on again.

Overall, it is a major product change. The critical thing IMO is what they
do in the next release, what they agree is broken and therefore fix, what
they add, etc. In the meantime, you have to evaluate it as such, identify
what you may need that has been lost or functionally changed, what new
functions that you can use, and from this you determine if you want to
upgrade. But many people buying Excel for the first time will get Excel 2007
de facto, so there will be a take-up regardless.

Personally, I would like to have seen an Excel release where they made the
functional changes first (tables, CF, pivots, etc.) in a stable version,
then did the strategy changes (ribbon, rows, etc.) in a further release.
This would have been a smoother transition and allowed time to bed the
functional changes and gives us a vastly improved non-ribbon version before
being asked to move on. But I can understand MS feeling that Excel needed a
headline grabbing change, and thus they did it all in one.

--
HTH

Bob

(there's no email, no snail mail, but somewhere should be gmail in my addy)
 
A big issue to me is the performanace degradation. Virtually every action,
calc, macro will be a lot slower, sometimes unusably so based on reports
we're seen here. I don't have any huge slow calcing workbooks to test the
site's claim of being 20x slower though. I have found that a macro that
took 6 minutes to run in Excel 2003 took 13 minutes in 2007.

"In Excel 2007, if you password protect your workbooks and they contain
macros, there is no way to enable macros."

Not "no way". There is a registry entry that turns this security feature
off.

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\12.0\Excel\Security\ExcelBypassEncryptedMacroScan

set to 1.

--
Jim
|I haven't taken the plunge myself so am asking here. I just fell onto a
| site that compares 2007 vs. 2003 quite brutally. It sure goes further
| than the surprisingly open (to me) article "Deprecated features for
| Excel 2007" http://blogs.msdn.com/excel/archive/2006/08/24/718786.aspx .
|
|
| Rather than list all of his chart I'll show the link. Do you believe it
| (below) is valid? It seems the author is quite biased against 2007, but
| is trying as least a little bit to be fair. Obviously he omits
| multitudes of 2007 improvements. Yet are his "complaints" accurate?
| http://www.add-ins.com/Excel 2003 versus 2007.htm
 
The article states:
Some will love the 2007 interface, some will hate it. Figure one to two
weeks to relearn Excel basics. It most likely will take over a year before
you match your past productivity.

What utter rubbish!! Anyone with reasonable intelligence can learn the new,
very intuitive, interface in less than a morning and be very proficient by
the end of the day.
The ribbon is so much easier to use than the old drill down menus. If you
like using the keyboard shortcuts, they're all right there on the ribbon.
Just press the Alt key.
The new ribbon makes it so much easier to find things compared to the old
menus. I'm able to work more quickly with the ribbon as well and I like not
having to dig down through menus to get to the things I want to use.
 
Wondering said:
The article states:
Some will love the 2007 interface, some will hate it. Figure one to two
weeks to relearn Excel basics. It most likely will take over a year
before you match your past productivity.

What utter rubbish!! Anyone with reasonable intelligence can learn the
new, very intuitive, interface in less than a morning and be very
proficient by the end of the day.
The ribbon is so much easier to use than the old drill down menus. If you
like using the keyboard shortcuts, they're all right there on the ribbon.
Just press the Alt key.
The new ribbon makes it so much easier to find things compared to the old
menus. I'm able to work more quickly with the ribbon as well and I like
not having to dig down through menus to get to the things I want to use.
Click to expand...

Not if you are an advanced user. It takes much longer than a morning to get
up to past productivity.
There are many things that are much more hidden in the new interface. Only
time will tell if this will work. There is no way I would recommend a
company to switch to 2007 at this stage.


--


Regards,


Peo Sjoblom





--


Regards,


Peo Sjoblom
 
I disagree. It's so much easier and faster to get to things with the ribbon.
Give me examples of how menus are easier than the ribbon.
 
IMO an experienced Excel user will NEVER get to past productivity. With
having to do three clicks where one or two worked previously, the crippled
F4 functionality, and no tear-off toolbars, productivity is seriously
impaired.

--
HTH

Bob

(there's no email, no snail mail, but somewhere should be gmail in my addy)
 
I understand you can augment the ribbon with whatever you want by code. I'm
sure some add-ins will come along to made that sreamlined. F4 crippled? How
so?
 
Regarding http://www.add-ins.com/Excel 2003 versus 2007.htm and
your astute discussion:

While that author has his "take" on rows and columns, there's no
question about what 2007 does there. Stability and whether anything will
run as fast (dual processor benefit?) may or may not be definitely
answered in time. And clearly there will be debate over the ribbon with
fans and detractors, but we already have a hard answer on that one; MS
decided it was better, and that the users would like it better.
(Moreover, some may contend that the broad-market-appeal - i.e. new
novice purchaser blood - trumped any MVP objections anyway in MS's
interface decision.) At any rate, it is what it is.

Obviously speed, stability and look and feel are crucial aspects.
Hearing your observations on those parts is valuable so thanks. Yet I'd
like to hear more about some of those specific feature "beefs." Is he
right about macros breaking, uncustomizable toolbars/ribbons except for
the quick access one, no customizable macro buttons (huh?), removed
charting features? Everyone (including novices, haha) really needs to
edit the registry to run macros on passworded workbooks?

It's worth noting again that the guy did brazenly omit positives, but we
have hundreds of articles detailing those. I just didn't hear his
specific claims mentioned on the depecated list, and wonder if he is
simply off the mark or not.
 
I list my general comments in response to his below. In general, here
are the major improvements in my opinion:
* Tables vs lists
* Filters for tables and PivotTables
* Data connections

I did notice some problems with charts, of the sort where I couldn't
find the feature I'm looking for and the Chart Wizard is well-hidden
in this version. I also don't like chart/object property window
change, but it's probably a matter of getting used to it. Over time,
I often found anything that initially looks different can still be
done the old way, or in a similar fashion.

Back to the list:

Number of rows/columns
His comment: Very few users need large numbers of rows/columns.
My comment: Try Excel 2003 for importing a 1500+ page annual expense
budget (printed by transaction line)

Calculate speed
His comment: VERY SLOW
My comment: I haven't noticed a difference, but I haven't done
extensive testing either

Chart Refresh
His comment: Extrmely slow. Almost like watching grass grow.
My comment: Have not noticed this problem

Opening and closing files
His comment: Slow
My comment: .xlsb format restores previous speed, if really needed

Conditional Formatting
His comment: Many tests are allowed
My comment: Many more improvements than just number of conditions

Customizing toolbars
His comment: Limited customization
My comment: I have a customized ribbon tab (a little XML skill helps)
that has all the features I use regularly.

Patterns in formatting charts and cells
His comment: Patterns are no longer available for selection
My comment: Patterns are available for cells

Interface
His comment: Ribbons with buttons and text drop downs
My comment: I was an Excel 2003 power user, and had very few problems
with the ribbons

Macro recording
His comment: Poor
My comment: I don't use this

Macros and workbook protection
His comment: Major problems
My comment: Just discovered this. I think it's due to the sharing
bit.


Customizing Macro buttons
His comment: Feature removed
My comment: Feature there, but for some reason disabled. Customized
ribbon elements can be easily linked to macros - again, with some XML
knowledge or a 3rd-party plugin.


Stability
His comment: Frequent user group reports of crashes and not being able
to save files
My comment: Few problems here.


File opening time
His comment: Many reports of problems of files not opening or very
slow to open
My comment: Not always a problem. I've seen it on a few occasions,
but not sure what causes it.
 
I'm with you, Peo! I wouldn't recommend 2007 for company upgrades either.
In my opinion, 2007 might be useful for a brand new user who does not need
lots of advanced functions, but it is a real step backwards for advanced
users.

Molly
 
Menus were MUCH better than these novice ribbons in MANY ways if you are an
advanced user. I can see how ribbons might be helpful if you are a new user,
but for advanced users who use numerous advanced functions at the single
click of an icon, ribbons are a real step backwards and waste precious
time/productivity. Even with the "custom" options for ribbons and the tiny
custom toolbar you can create, it doesn't remotely compare to the speed of
the old toolbars. Additionally, you can fit WAY MORE commands on the former
icon toolbars than you can on ribbons, which is paramount to advanced users.
The ribbons are way too elementary for the advanced user.

Molly
 
Why should we need an add-in? Microsoft should simply have given us the
option to go back to classic toolbars. If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

Sick and tired of Microsoft forcing things on us, especially when the new
stuff (designed for newbies and idiots) takes away options for advanced users.
 
My 2 cents:

Number of rows/columns
His comment: Very few users need large numbers of rows/columns.
Click to expand...

Depends on the type of users. The point is, even though Excel 2007
theoretically can work with 1 million rows, that's not what
spreadhseets are meant for. You should use a database for that: much
faster and more reliable.
Calculate speed
His comment: VERY SLOW
My comment: I haven't noticed a difference, but I haven't done
extensive testing either
Click to expand...

I have. I have done several tests and Excel 2007 is sooo slower.
Macros that run in 30 seconds in Excel 2003 (processing a number of
files in a folder) take 2 minutes in Excel 2007. And the computer
running 2007 is much faster than that running 2003!

Conditional Formatting
His comment: Many tests are allowed
My comment: Many more improvements than just number of conditions
Click to expand...

One of the few interesting improvements
Customizing toolbars
His comment: Limited customization
My comment: I have a customized ribbon tab (a little XML skill helps)
that has all the features I use regularly.
Click to expand...

I find it very hard to customize the ribbon. For instance, I added two
buttons, one for pasting values and one for selecting visible cells,
but I found no way to customize the icons; as of now, they both have
the same icons, which is clearly annoying. Maybe there is a way, but
if there is, it is not well documented.

Macro recording
His comment: Poor
My comment: I don't use this
Click to expand...

Much poorer than 2003. Some operations on charts cannot be recorded.

VBA has slightly changed and some functionalities were dropped
(application.filesearch, for instance). What pisses me off is that
this is not documented anywhere! It's unacceptable. Microsoft should
have clearly specified what was removed, why, and what can be used as
an alternative. But why bother if you're a monopolist and users will
keep buying your products anyway, no matter how crappy?

Stability
His comment: Frequent user group reports of crashes and not being able
to save files
My comment: Few problems here.
Click to expand...

HUGE problems here. I am fighting with the IT department of my company
to have my PC downgraded to 2003, as it's faster and more stable.
 
Back
Top