Microsoft Excel

Interesting. Has to be said though, some of those dialogs are looking old and tired.  When are you guys moving to a vector based UI?

Those dialogs seem as small and clumsy as always. You design for high resolutions with the ribbon, but you don't change the dialogs. Perfect example: Data tab / text to columns / fixed width. I have a 1900*1200 monitor and (as usual in windows) Excel's window is maximied. Yet said dialog only uses 477*94 pixels (including both horizontal and vertical scrollbars) to display the relevant information of this modal dialog, THAT'S LESS THAN 2 PERCENT OF THE SCREEN AREA!!! Please, pay attention to dialog design!!!

Looks cool, will it work like vba?  (god I hope this isn't a setting already)  It'd be awesome if when the suggested function you could arrow down then hit enter to select the function you want.

I guess that the compatibility checker will only inspect the use of functions in excel workbook cells and not in VBA code associated with that workbook?

I'd add the name of the NEW function to the tooltip, as it may be that the new function's name isn't visible in the current scrollarea of the intellisense dropdown.

Joseph Chirilov:  In VBA when IntilliSsense displays the drop down, I can arrow down to highlight the item I want then hit enter, the system will then auto complete the item and let me continue typing to finish the statement.  However (at least on my system) if I do the same with a function the system only enters the amount of text that I've typed so far and moves to the next cell.  ex: In a sheet if I type =Su then arrow down to highlight Sum then hit enter what ends up in the formula bar is =Su  

It'd be nice if after hitting enter the system entered =Sum( into the formula bar and left the cursor after the (  so I can complete the function.

@Joseph,

Please post the local function names table as well. Thanks. If I am using a French version of Excel, does it follow the same scheme ? Are the function names localized ? If so, what is their names ?

anon - The function names will be localized for locales that currently support localized names (French is one of them). We do not have the final naming for the localized versions of the functions yet.

I profoundly hope that the new function names will NOT be localized (=translated) into foreign languages.  I can tell you from experience (Dutch, French, German) that it is a source of utmost frustration.  Some localized names don't even ressemble their original counterparts.  It's guesswork all the time.  To my knowledge, their is no standard dictionary included in excel which would help translating.  On top of that, most interesting documentation is in English anyway.  Please drop translated functions.

I profoundly hope that the new function names will NOT be localized (=translated) into foreign languages.  I can tell you from experience (Dutch, French, German) that it is a source of utmost frustration.  Some localized names don't even ressemble their original counterparts.  It's guesswork all the time.  To my knowledge, their is no standard dictionary included in excel which would help translating.  On top of that, most interesting documentation is in English anyway.  Please drop translated functions.

BEL8490:

I have a little tool that helps you find translations:

www.jkp-ads.com/download.asp#xlmenufundict

JKP, I'm very well aware of your excellent utility ( I use it since +/-2005).  But with all due respect it is not part of standard Excel. Even if it was you still have to use the English names in VBA code and the Local names in your worksheets!  

And admit that FLOOR is a lot simpler than AFRONDEN.BENEDEN (why the dot anyway?)

"...when a workbook created in Excel 2007 and earlier is opened in Excel 2010, all functions that were updated in Excel 2010 will recalculate with the more accurate algorithms"

How will this work with workbooks that are shared across users who are on both 2007 (or earlier) and 2010? For example, if we have a workbook on Sharepoint that was built in 2007, and a 2010 user opens it up causing the formulas to be "upgraded";

(1) Will there be a warning for the 2010 user when their results are different than the "original" results? In many cases the results may be close enough, but what happens when the two users base dependent calculations off those two different results (I'm thinking the Mars lander fiasco, although maybe they don't use Excel at NASA...). The results don't have to /be/ the same, but the user should know when Excel is returning different results for different users. Maybe one of those green triangle error warning icons, with a message something like "Excel 2010 uses a more accurate calculation method for this formula; Earlier versions of Excel (2007 and earlier) will return a different result than what you see here". Or if you really wanted to get fancy you could include an option for the user to click to recalculate using legacy formulas- (a) this cell only, or (b) all cells on this sheet, or (c) all cells in this workbook.

(2) When the 2010 user saves their changes, will the formulas revert to the original 'compatibility' formulas? If not, what happens when the next 2007 user accesses the workbook to try to do their work- will they get the #NAME error?

And on an unrelated note (maybe 2010 and 2007 are the same in this regard, but I don't use 2007)- on both the function dialogue box, and the ribbon examples above, I don't see a listing for UDFs... To keep things intuitive for the end user, shouldn't /all/ functions be accessible through the same menus/locations?

I like the autocomplete, although I recall having the same issue as JohnR - I expect a <return> to select an entry... more consistent with standard interface design. How will UDFs be integrated into the autocomplete list? If I write UDFs for myself or others (which is quite often), will they be able to use it without perceiving it to be any different from any other formula, or will they have to find the UDF elsewhere to use it?

Perhaps include an Excel setting where users (or system admins who are rolling out a standard image) can select whether to automatically 'upgrade' formulas to the 2010 version, or always leave them in compatability mode for backward compatibility.

Thank you,

Keith

I just accessed a machine with 2007 to test;

In 2007, I was unable to quickly figure out a way to access a UDF from the formulas ribbon, meaning that a user will have to know the name of a UDF, or use autocomplete to find it. The UDF /does/ show up in the autocomplete list, but autocomplete doesn't show up until the first letter is typed... so if the end user can't remember the actual name of the UDF, they would have to start with =a, then =b, etc., searching the autocomplete list for each letter until they finally located the UDF. I suppose I could be nice and name all my UDFs as "a_name", but that forces me to be inconsistent with the naming convention you are proposing for 2010... assuming that you want developers to follow that naming convention.

Speaking of which, at least in 2007, I tried to create a UDF that would meet your naming convention, so that any UDFs I create could be "forward compatible". Presumably this is changed in 2010, but when I try to create a UDF on a 2007 machine called [Function a.myname.test(parameters)] 2007 balks at the periods in the name. Perhaps this is the wrong approach to building a UDF to make it forward compatible? I guess the real question is whether developers will be able to use periods in their own UDF names in 2010 to follow your naming convention. If I'm creating a unique formula that doesn't fit into the existing formula types, it wouldn't matter as much, but if I'm adding a formula that does a statistical calculation such as =Beta.Skewed2 it makes sense to follow the existing naming schema.

Best,

Keith

Hello Joseph or Jessica,

We're trying to understand what has changed in Excel 2010's AutoComplete feature.  We have over 100 UDFs in our VBA add-in which never showed up in Excel 2007's AutoComplete list (we actually liked how they were hidden).  However, now they are showing up in Excel 2010's list and we're not sure why.  Is there someway to control whether UDFs appear in the list or not?

Thanks,

-Eric