For those of you who are upgrading to Microsoft Excel 2010 from an earlier version of the program, this introduction summarizes the new features in Excel 2010. One of the first things youll notice about Excel 2010 is that the program incorporates the ribbon, which was introduced in Excel 2007. If you used Excel 2003 or an earlier version of Excel, youll need to spend only a little bit of time working with the new user interface to bring yourself back up to your usual proficiency.
Managing Excel Files and Settings in the Backstage View
If you used Excel 2007, youll immediately notice one significant change: the Microsoft Office button, located at the top left corner of the program window in Excel 2007, has been replaced by the File tab. After releasing the 2007 Microsoft Office System, the Office User Experience team re-examined the programs user interfaces to determine how they could be improved. During this process, they discovered that it was possible to divide user tasks into two categories: in tasks, such as formatting and formula creation, which affect the contents of the workbook directly, and out tasks, such as saving and printing, which could be considered workbook management tasks.
When the User Experience and Excel teams focused on the Excel 2007 user interface, they discovered that several workbook management tasks were sprinkled among the ribbon tabs that contained content-related tasks. The Excel team moved all of the workbook management tasks to the File tab, which users can click to display these commands in the new Backstage view.
Previewing Data by Using Paste Preview
One of the most common tasks undertaken by Excel users involves cutting or copying a worksheets contents, such as text or numbers, and pasting that data into either the same workbook or a separate Office document. Users have always been able to paste data from the Microsoft Office Clipboard and control which formatting elements were pasted into the destination; however, in versions prior to Excel 2010, you had to select a paste option, observe the results, and (often) undo the paste and try another option until you found the option that produced the desired result.
In Excel 2010, you can take advantage of the new Paste Preview capability to see how your data will appear in the worksheet before you commit to the paste. By pointing to any of the icons in the Paste Options palette, you can switch between options to discover the one that makes your pasted data appear the way you want it to.
Note
Troubleshooting The appearance of buttons and groups on the ribbon changes depending on the width of the program window. For information about changing the appearance of the ribbon to match our screen images, see at the beginning of this book.
Customizing the Excel 2010 User Interface
When the Office User Experience team designed the ribbon interface for Excel 2007, they allowed users to modify the program window by adding and removing commands on the Quick Access Toolbar. In Excel 2010, you can still modify the Quick Access Toolbar, but you also have many more options for changing the ribbon interface. You can hide or display built-in ribbon tabs, change the order of built-in ribbon tabs, add custom groups to a ribbon tab, and create custom ribbon tabs which, in turn, can contain custom groups. These custom groups provide easy access to existing ribbon commands as well as custom commands that run macros stored in the workbook.
Summarizing Data by Using More Accurate Functions
In earlier versions of Excel, the program contained statistical, scientific, engineering, and financial functions that would return inaccurate results in some relatively rare circumstances. For Excel 2010, the Excel programming team identified the functions that returned inaccurate results and collaborated with academic and industry analysts to improve the functions accuracy.
The Excel team also changed the naming conventions used to identify the programs functions. This change is most noticeable with regard to the programs statistical functions. The table below lists the statistical distribution functions that have been improved in Excel 2010.
Distribution | Functions |
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Beta | BETA.DIST, BETA.INV |
Binomial | BINOM.DIST, BINOM.INV |
Chi squared | CHISQ.DIST, CHISQ.DIST.RT, CHISQ.INV, CHISQ.INV.RT |
Exponential | EXPON.DIST |
F | F.DIST, F.DIST.RT, F.INV, F.INV.RT |
Gamma | GAMMA.DIST, GAMMA.INV |
Hypergeometric | HYPGEOM.DIST |
Lognormal | LOGNORM.DIST, LOGNORM.INV |
Negative Binomial | NEGBINOM.DIST |
Normal | NORM.DIST, NORM.INV |
Standard Normal | NORM.S.DIST, NORMS.INV |
Poisson | POISSON.DIST |
Students t | T.DIST, T.DIST.RT, T.DIST.2T, T.INV, T.INV.2T |
Weibull | WEIBULL.DIST |
Excel 2010 also contains more accurate statistical summary and test functions. The following table lists those functions, as well as the new naming convention that distinguishes between new and old functions. The Excel programming team chose to retain the older functions to ensure that workbooks created in Excel 2010 would be compatible with workbooks created in previous versions of the program.
Function name | Description |
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CEILING.PRECISE | Consistent with mathematical definition; rounds up towards positive infinity regardless of sign of number being rounded |
FLOOR.PRECISE | |