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Microsoft Excel

The team blog for Microsoft Excel and Excel Services.
Quick detour – cool things on the status bar and great-looking charts

Today I decided to take a quick break from Excel Services to 

  1. talk about a few small but useful changes that have been made to the status bar and 
  2. show off a few charts

First, the status bar

Zoom control - we have added a slider that allows the user to adjust the “zoom” of the document without needing to pop up any windows.  When you slide the control, the document resizes as you slide, so you can adjust to just the “zoom” you want before you let go of the slider.  You can also click on the + and – buttons to increment or decrement “zoom” by 10% per click.  Finally, for those of you that like using the zoom dialog, you can just click on the 100% (which is a button) and it will launch the Zoom dialog.


(Click to enlarge)

Multiple status bar calculations – In previous versions of Excel, when you selected numerical data, you could see a summary of that data in the status bar – sum, count, average, etc.  You could choose from 6 different summaries, but you could only see one at a time.  That seemed unnecessarily limiting, so in Excel 12 we let you put any or all of them on the status bar, so you can see sum, min, max, numerical count, count, and average all at once if you like, or any combination of the six.


(Click to enlarge)

You specify the items you would like to see by right-clicking on the status bar.


(Click to enlarge)

View switcher – In the tradition of Microsoft Word and Microsoft PowerPoint, we have added a set of buttons to the status bar that allow you to switch between views.  One is for normal view, one is for page break preview, and the third is for a great new view we have added to Excel 12 – page layout view.  Much more on page layout view when I cover the formatting, printing, and layout improvements we have made in Excel 12 (probably early next year at current speed).


(Click to enlarge)

Insert worksheet button – ok, this isn’t on the status bar, but it is close, so I am including it in this post.  You may have noticed in previous posts that there was an additional small button after the tabs in the spreadsheets I have been showing off.  When clicked, this button adds a worksheet.  The point is simply to make it quicker to add worksheets to your workbooks.


(Click to enlarge)

And now for some screenshots of charts …

We have done a lot of great work in charting this release (see the overview post for a bit of a description).  I am going to cover this work in detail sometime around the new year, but to give everyone an idea of what is coming, I thought I would post a few screenshots of charts I made yesterday afternoon.  This should give everyone an idea as to the vastly improved charting that is coming with Office 12.  The most obvious thing you will notice is the range of new graphic effects, like transparency, lighting effects, shadows, reflections, etc.  Besides being much better looking with a greater range of graphic effects, we have also done a lot to make it a snap to create a very wide variety of different, professional-looking charts.  Each of the charts below were created with no more than 2-3 clicks total, so the whole thing took a matter of minutes.  Enjoy.

(Note, there is more than one chart on each screenshot, so I encourage you to click on the images below and take a look.)


(Click to enlarge)


(Click to enlarge)


(Click to enlarge)


(Click to enlarge)


(Click to enlarge)


(Click to enlarge)

Next week, back to Excel Web Services and more about running spreadsheets on the server.

Posted: Friday, November 18, 2005 9:55 AM by David Gainer

Comments

Ola Sandstrom said:

Will there be any true 3-dim plot and grid charts?
# November 18, 2005 2:12 PM

Jon Peltier said:

Microsoft has stated that they haven't developed any new chart types (i.e., "true" 3D charts). What they have done is a great deal of work on the "new graphic effects, like transparency, lighting effects, shadows, reflections, etc." The charts certainly look more attractive, but I wonder if people will be any less likely to create charts that portray the data inaccurately.
# November 18, 2005 2:51 PM

PatriotB said:

Looks like the graphics capabilities are finally caught up to those of Mac Office :)
# November 18, 2005 2:54 PM

Ola Sandstrom said:

Jon, sorry to hear that. It world have been a major step forward in Analysing the data.

This does not get you very far:
http://www.tushar-mehta.com/excel/charts/3d_surface/#limitation

I try to avoid the 2-dimensions visualisied in 3D. They look good but are not very informative.

Looking forward to something like this:
http://www.ozgrid.com/Services/excel-statistics-analytical-add-in.htm
# November 18, 2005 3:16 PM

Ola Sandstrom said:

While I'm at it and can't post under Function...

Can this be an option?

=LOOKUPV(<Value>,<Table>,<Column>,<True/False>,<action iferror>)

Examples:
=LOOKUPV("ABC",A1:C100,3,0,"Error!")
=LOOKUPV("ABC",A1:C100,3,0,"") --> ""
=LOOKUPV("ABC",A1:C100,3,0) --> the usual error values

IF: =IF(A1<A2,"Yes","No") --> #VALUE!
IF: =IF(A1<A2,"Yes","No","Error") --> Error
# November 18, 2005 3:34 PM

Jon Peltier said:

Ola - Don't you want VLOOKUP instead of LOOKUPV?
# November 18, 2005 4:29 PM

Harlan Grove said:

For those of use with lots of macros that use

Application.StatusBar = OurMessageHere

how much (little) usable space will remain in the status bar?

Will there be any way to disable these new UI controls?

Are the old indicators NUM, SCRL, OVR, etc. gone for good?

What's the orange dot just to the right of the status mode indicator (Ready)?

And now that I've noticed the new sheet tab to the right of the last sheet tab in sheet selector, if there are so many sheets that only a few tabs appear at a time, will the new worksheet tab be sticky and always appear on the right side of the visible tabs, or will one need to scroll to the last sheet's tab in order to access it? If the latter, wouldn't it have made more sense to have added it to the left side of the horizontal scroll bar?
# November 18, 2005 4:54 PM

Simon Jones said:

Can I enter a plea for anything which can be clicked on, such as the 100% or Min/Max/Avg to have some sort of visual indication that it can be clicked on. If it doesn't look like a button, how are we to know that it can be clicked?

I think there should also be a quick way to return to 100% zoom. Is there?
# November 18, 2005 6:11 PM

Jon Peltier said:

Simon -

As you scroll past it, the zoom factor hesitates a bit at 100%, so it's easy to hit.

Harlan -

That little Add Sheet tab worries me. As I go back and forth between sheets, I wonder how many times I'll be going to the sheet I just inserted rather than the one I thought I clicked on. Shift+F11 is so convenient already.

- Jon
# November 18, 2005 6:33 PM

Harlan Grove said:

Jon Peltier...
...
|That little Add Sheet tab worries me. As I go
|back and forth between sheets, I wonder how many
|times I'll be going to the sheet I just inserted
|rather than the one I thought I clicked on.
...

FWIW, Lotus 123 has a new sheet button just to the right of it's worksheet tab scroller which looks approximately like </>, i.e., two triangual buttons forming a square with NE-SW diagonal splitting it in two. It has always been problematic. Microsft seems not to learn from it's competitors UI mistakes.
# November 18, 2005 7:13 PM

Jean Martineau said:

I like the status bar.

It would be nice if one of the calculations could be choose from other excel functions (like median, percentile,...). This would help to satisfy a variety of user needs for the calculations.

Jean
# November 18, 2005 9:05 PM

Mike Dunn said:

Ditto what Simon said. If something is clickable, purposely giving it no affordances that make it look clickable is just silly. I've never understood why that design mistake (made in 1997, btw) has been carried on for so long.
# November 18, 2005 11:03 PM

Biff said:

I like the new zoom feature.

The new insert sheet feature "sounds" good but Harlan's question raises a good point about having to scroll to "find" it and would seem to negate any gain in convenience.
# November 18, 2005 11:46 PM

Hadley said:

The new graphics look absolutely beautiful, but what efforts are you making to help people make useful graphics?

A useful graphic is true to the data and helps the user understand the true message in the data. Many (Tufte, Bertin, Cleveland, Wilkinson, Chambers, Tukey, to name a few) offer advice on how to create graphics to build an understand of the data. How does excel facilitate this?

Will excel graphics forever be doomed to merely creating pretty business charts?

# November 19, 2005 2:09 AM

Johan Nordberg said:

I read your blog with great interest! I use Excel alot and I teach Excel several times a week. You really seem to have made many common tasks much easer! Great stuff!

In all previous version of Excel the dialog for customizing page headers and footers is just the worst dialog box in Office. Are there going to be any changes for that in Excel 12? Since we now have Page Layout I hope that the Page Header is edited more in the same way you do in Word.

How come there never been any tool tips for the buttons in that particular dialog box?

# November 19, 2005 6:23 PM

Marc said:

A) I really like the multiple summary calculations on the status bar, so before I ask for something, I want to say thank you for that.

B) Any chance of getting "Unique Items" as a summary calculation on the status bar?

C) Any chance of being able to customize summary calculation(s) on the status bar?

Thank you very much. Marc
# November 20, 2005 11:35 AM

Rob van Gelder said:

Jon: Shift F11... if only I had known. All those years lost.
# November 20, 2005 2:24 PM

Mpemba said:

1) Disappointed to read that no new Chart-types have been added. The lack of a true 3D one is a GLARING hole in the CV. While 3D scatter charts are arguable "difficult" to use well, 3D surface charts are standard and very very useful.

2) Disappointed too that log chart (and probability chart) axes will miss out on yet another upgrade.
- a) To be able to start and finish log chart axes at something other than power of 10
- b) To be able to "Options - Turn Off" the truly annoying error dialog that comes up every time a log chart refreshes when presented with data which has been numerically rounded to 0 [Note: it's valid data]

M



# November 21, 2005 3:27 AM

Jan said:

Jon Peltier didn't you want Index and Match rather than vlookup(). It's much more robust and efficient.

Can't help but feel sorry for all those soon to be empty toner cartridges. Black, black & more black background?
# November 21, 2005 5:49 AM

Helen said:

I'm really disappointed to see that this is what the focus has been on in the charting domain.

There are still so many chart types that Excel doesn't support properly (try doing a horizontal version of up/down bars, or a proper surface chart) and so many features that are missing from existing ones (non-numerical axis labels, textual scatter chart labels, leader lines for data labels).

And instead of improving any of that, people spend their time on "transparency, lighting effects, shadows, reflections"... Frankly, who cares? In fact, I suspect that these will do more harm than good, since they'll be massively misused the way animations are misused in Powerpoint: used everywhere without discrimination, just because they're there. Less signal, more noise.

Apparently nobody in the Excel dev team has read any of Edward Tufte's works (or at least nobody with any clout).
# November 21, 2005 11:12 AM

Harlan Grove said:

In re Helen's comments,

Similar to my disappointment with the paucity of what Microsoft has done with formulas and functions. 'T would seem Microsoft has done as little work with charting in respect to real functional improvement vs pure eyewash. But those are functional areas of interest and importance only to those foolish enough to use Excel for serious quantitative analysis. Excel is going in a different direction: 'business intelligence', which reminds me of the Pat Oliphant cartoon showing 'Central Intelligence Acency' followed by 'Central WHAT?! Agency'.
# November 21, 2005 1:06 PM

David Gainer said:

Howdy, and thanks for the suggestions and feedback.

Ola, we have not added any new chart types this version. Also, if you wrap VLOOKUP in the new IFERROR function, you will get the same result.

Jon, Hadley, part of what I will discuss when I fully cover charting is our work around styles and quick layouts. These will be designed to help people portray data clearly and accurately with efficiency.

Harlan, by default not all 5 will be on. The remaining space will depend on resolution, of course. If Excel needs to temporarily hide some of the summaries to show status bar messages, it will. The old indicators are still available – check out the right-click screen shot. The orange dot is a record macro button. Yes, the “New Sheet” tab is always the last tab.

Simon, visuals are not final. The 100% button will look much more like a clickable button before we are done.

Johan, yes, we have improved the header/footer experience. More on that after Christmas.

Marc, thanks for the feedback. Probably not this version, but on the list for future consideration.
# November 21, 2005 6:05 PM

tygrus said:

I'd love to be able to do linear graphs of incomplete data. This would be like a time series but able to deal with non-dates and major units <1.
# November 21, 2005 10:48 PM

Dave said:

I've been very impressed with many of the features I've seen discussed on this webpage, but I'm very disappointed to hear that some of the gaps in charting capability have not been filled.

When will we get true 3D surface and scatter plots, and even 4D contour plots (a 3D surface colored by another function)?

It gets really tiring having to export data from Excel to plot it in a 3rd party software.
# November 22, 2005 9:10 AM

Brad Corbin said:

You have to check out the comments made by an Office 12 Beta 1 reviewer over at WindowsAtoZ.

"As with Word 12, the only real change to Excel 12 is the interface"

Almost choked on my coffee when I read that. You can see my response at the link above.
# November 23, 2005 1:30 AM

Mpemba said:

>Almost choked on my coffee when I read that. >You can see my response at the link above.

That's a matter of opinion - depending on whether you think big cheesy graphics constitute real progress or not.

The point in this thread is that for CHARTING it comes over that apart from some "enhanced" visual effects to the existing chart types there has been no progress.

I suspect that it would be extremely expensive (in developer time) to redesign MS chart. Giving the existing component a minor facelift is much more cost effective. (Looks the part even if nothing substantial has happened).

m



# November 24, 2005 5:58 AM

Microsoft Excel 2007 (nee Excel 12) said:

One of the themes we focused on with Office 2007 was “great looking documents”.&amp;nbsp; For the next half-dozen...
# March 13, 2006 2:27 PM

Microsoft Excel 2007 (nee Excel 12) said:

In the previous two charting posts, I wrote about how you can make a professional chart with four simple...
# April 13, 2006 5:01 PM

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