Office XP: What's New in Excel

by Lee Hudspeth

Here's a list of all the articles in this series:

• Office XP: What's New in Excel XP (TNPC #5.06)
• Office XP: What's New in Excel XP - Part 2 (TNPC #5.07)
• Office XP: What's New in Excel XP - Part 3 (TNPC #5.08)
• Office XP: What's New in Excel XP - Part 4 (TNPC #5.11)

Here's a listing of all the new Excel XP features and my grade for each one (as this series is still in progress, more items are yet to be added). The list shown below contains other links and resources for which there was no space in the original articles.

My overall grade of Excel XP's new features: 8.9 out of 10 (final grade will be posted at the end of the series).

1. Digitally sign a document (workbook) -- Grade: 7 (nice feature, but a tad hard to discover)
2. Customize the Places Bar -- Grade: 7 (nice feature, but the add operation is hard to discover)
3. New from existing workbook -- Grade: 6 (works fine, but limited usefulness)
4. Task Pane -- Grade: 10 (cool, but I prefer keeping the pane turned off until I need it: scroll to the very bottom of the pane and clear the "Show at startup" check box)
5. Web Query -- Grade: 7
6. Select Data Source -- Grade: 7
7. Find and Replace -- Grade: 10
8. Edit Links -- Grade: 6
9. Emailing a range -- Grade: 7
10. Insert and delete columns with AutoFilter on -- Grade: 7
11. Play back worksheet data -- Grade: 10
12. Smart tags -- Grade: 10 (for information about third party smart tags for Excel click here)
13. Worksheet protection -- Grade: 10 (for more information see the Microsoft KnowledgeBase article XL2002: Worksheet-Protection Options Overview)
14. Ask a Question -- Grade: 9
15. Insert graphics in headers and footers -- Grade: 8
16. Speech recognition -- Grade: n/a
17. Crash management -- Grade: 8
18. Color-coded worksheet tabs -- Grade: 10
19. Office Clipboard and Paste Options -- Grade: 10
20. Retain column widths -- Grade: 10
21. Function argument ScreenTips -- Grade: 10 (most excellent!)
22. Recommended functions -- Grade: 10
23. Cut-and-paste function examples -- Grade: 10
24. Watch Window toolbar -- Grade: 10 (outstanding)
25. AutoSum includes other functions -- Grade: 10 (AutoSum should have always worked this way)
26. Formula evaluator tool -- Grade: 10
27. Formula Auditing -- Grade: 10
28. Check formulas for errors -- Grade: 10

Amazon.com has some good prices right now on various Office XP upgrades, some of these packages include free shipping.

• Microsoft Office XP Standard Upgrade
• Microsoft Office XP Professional Upgrade
• Microsoft Office XP Developer Edition Upgrade
• Microsoft Office XP Professional

You can reach Lee Hudspeth at:
leehudspeth@TheNakedPC.com

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