Quick detour – cool things on the status bar and great-looking charts

3-dim charts

Ola Sandstrom — Fri, 18 Nov 2005 22:12:44 GMT

Will there be any true 3-dim plot and grid charts?

re: Quick detour – cool things on the status bar and great-looking charts

Jon Peltier — Fri, 18 Nov 2005 22:51:49 GMT

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.

re: Quick detour – cool things on the status bar and great-looking charts

PatriotB — Fri, 18 Nov 2005 22:54:09 GMT

Looks like the graphics capabilities are finally caught up to those of Mac Office :)

re: Quick detour – cool things on the status bar and great-looking charts

Ola Sandstrom — Fri, 18 Nov 2005 23:16:25 GMT

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

Error Option

Ola Sandstrom — Fri, 18 Nov 2005 23:34:34 GMT

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

re: Quick detour – cool things on the status bar and great-looking charts

Jon Peltier — Sat, 19 Nov 2005 00:29:31 GMT

Ola - Don't you want VLOOKUP instead of LOOKUPV?

re: Quick detour – cool things on the status bar and great-looking charts

Harlan Grove — Sat, 19 Nov 2005 00:54:30 GMT

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?

re: Quick detour – cool things on the status bar and great-looking charts

Simon Jones — Sat, 19 Nov 2005 02:11:07 GMT

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?

re: Quick detour – cool things on the status bar and great-looking charts

Jon Peltier — Sat, 19 Nov 2005 02:33:29 GMT

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

re: Quick detour – cool things on the status bar and great-looking charts

Harlan Grove — Sat, 19 Nov 2005 03:13:50 GMT

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.

re: Quick detour – cool things on the status bar and great-looking charts

Jean Martineau — Sat, 19 Nov 2005 05:05:24 GMT

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

re: Quick detour – cool things on the status bar and great-looking charts

Mike Dunn — Sat, 19 Nov 2005 07:03:09 GMT

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.

re: Quick detour – cool things on the status bar and great-looking charts

Biff — Sat, 19 Nov 2005 07:46:14 GMT

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.

re: Quick detour – cool things on the status bar and great-looking charts

Hadley — Sat, 19 Nov 2005 10:09:19 GMT

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?

re: Quick detour – cool things on the status bar and great-looking charts

Johan Nordberg — Sun, 20 Nov 2005 02:23:50 GMT

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?

re: Quick detour – cool things on the status bar and great-looking charts

Marc — Sun, 20 Nov 2005 19:35:14 GMT

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

re: Quick detour – cool things on the status bar and great-looking charts

Rob van Gelder — Sun, 20 Nov 2005 22:24:05 GMT

Jon: Shift F11... if only I had known. All those years lost.

re: Quick detour – cool things on the status bar and great-looking charts

Mpemba — Mon, 21 Nov 2005 11:27:22 GMT

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

re: Quick detour – cool things on the status bar and great-looking charts

Jan — Mon, 21 Nov 2005 13:49:55 GMT

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?

re: Quick detour – cool things on the status bar and great-looking charts

Helen — Mon, 21 Nov 2005 19:12:48 GMT

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).

re: Quick detour – cool things on the status bar and great-looking charts

Harlan Grove — Mon, 21 Nov 2005 21:06:05 GMT

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'.

re: Quick detour – cool things on the status bar and great-looking charts

David Gainer — Tue, 22 Nov 2005 02:05:02 GMT

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.

re: Quick detour – cool things on the status bar and great-looking charts

tygrus — Tue, 22 Nov 2005 06:48:03 GMT

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.

re: Quick detour – cool things on the status bar and great-looking charts

Dave — Tue, 22 Nov 2005 17:10:49 GMT

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.

Worst Office 12 review ever

Brad Corbin — Wed, 23 Nov 2005 09:30:43 GMT

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.

re: Quick detour – cool things on the status bar and great-looking charts

Mpemba — Thu, 24 Nov 2005 13:58:05 GMT

>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

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