From The Naked PC issue #5.08...

Office XP: What's New in Excel XP - Part 3

by Lee Hudspeth
April 11, 2002

Excel XP is chock full of interesting and helpful new features. Here's my next batch. The link to my related supplemental Web page appears at the end of this article.

15. Insert graphics in headers and footers -- New in Excel XP, there's an option to insert a graphic into a header or footer.
UI: File, Page Setup, Header/Footer, Custom Header (or Custom Footer), then click the Picture button (second button from the right), and this displays the common Insert Picture dialog.
Grade: 8

16. Speech recognition -- I am fortunate to not have a repetitive motion injury, and I'm a fast, accurate typist. So I myself am not very motivated by this aspect of Office XP. Bottom line: I haven't tested it. Your mileage may vary. If you're going to use it, Microsoft recommends a high quality headset mike with gain adjustment, and Excel won't let you install it unless you've got a 400MHz or faster processor and at least 128MB of RAM.

17. Crash management -- I'm lumping several new features into one category here. It's now much easier to recover a workbook that was damaged during a crash, and to see what Excel did to recover it (The Document Recovery task pane appears automatically when Excel re-opens after a crash). Use the "hang manager" feature when Excel is locked up and you can't close it (Start, Programs, Microsoft Office Tools, Microsoft Office Application Recovery). Force Excel to attempt to recover a potentially damaged workbook (File, Open, click Open button's down arrow, Open and Repair). New Microsoft System Information (Msinfo32.exe) tree for "Office Event/Application Fault" logging.
UI: See above.
Grade: 8

18. Color-coded worksheet tabs -- Okay, I admit it, this is a relatively minor new feature. But I like it. A lot. You can set the color of the worksheet tabs (the tabs marked "Sheet1", "Sheet2" and so on that appear along the bottom left edge of Excel's window).
UI: right-click the tab, Tab Color, pick your color, OK.
Grade: 10

19. Office Clipboard and Paste Options -- The Office Clipboard now resides in the Task Pane, and holds more stuff (24 items). When you paste, a Paste Options action button automatically appears at that location and astutely offers you these options: Keep Source Formatting or Match Destination Formatting. It's interesting to note that this is a team effort between the new clipboard functions and the smart tag user interface.
UI: View, Task Pane, Clipboard (or Edit, Office Clipboard).
Grade: 10

20. Retain column widths -- This is another example of the combination of features with the smart tag UI. Now when you paste cell or column data between sheets or workbooks, the Paste Options button (mentioned above in #19) appears and offers these choices: Keep Source Formatting, Match Destination Formatting, Values Only, Values and Number Formatting, Values and Source Formatting, Keep Source Column Widths, Formatting Only, and Link Cells.
UI: click the smart tag Paste Options button after the paste
Grade: 10

To see my supplemental page containing my reviews of Excel XP and Word XP's new features in a table format, go here:

http://www.TheNakedPC.com/t/508/tr.cgi?lee1

You can reach Lee Hudspeth at:
mailto:LeeHudspeth@TheNakedPC.com

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