What’s New in Microsoft Excel 97?

Work Smarter

Formula AutoCorrect   Microsoft Excel automatically identifies and corrects 15 of the most common formula errors.

Natural language formulas   In Microsoft Excel 97, you can now build formulas using your own row and column labels and headings without having to first create named ranges.

Formula Palette   combines the Function Wizard—which helps you build functions—and the formula bar—which helps you edit them—into one useful tool that rests right on the formula bar. The Formula Palette provides easy access to a menu with the most popular functions (SUM, AVERAGE, IF, HYPERLINK, COUNT, MAX, SIN, SUMIF, PMT, STDEV).

Range Finders   Microsoft Excel 97 now makes it easier to understand your numbers at a glance by employing color to simplify formula building and editing. The range of cells corresponding to a formula are color-coded, along with the cell containing the formula, so that you can quickly see which numbers a formula pertains to.

Template Wizard with Data Tracking   New in Office 95. Create electronic forms for your workbooks. Then use the forms to gather data from your co-workers, and send the data to a database without retyping.

Built-in Templates   New in Office 95. Quickly set up invoices, expense tracking, and purchase orders by using one of the professionally designed templates that ship with Microsoft Excel.

Bigger worksheets   You now have four times the number of rows available for use in a worksheet. (65,536 rows per worksheet rather than 16,384.)

Visual printing   The new Page Break Preview feature shows you which part of your sheet will print and where the page breaks are. If they’re not quite what you want, drag and drop the page breaks to get the exact layout you want to print.

Beyond the Grid Formatting Options

Automatically format specific cells   based on values in your spreadsheet. The formatting can alert you when you’ve exceeded your budget, or can notify you when a goal has been reached. Make it easier to spot anomalies, spot changes in data you hadn’t foreseen, or categorize results from calculations.

Custom format cells   Format specific cells to highlight or organize your data. With Microsoft Excel 97, you can rotate and indent text within cells to show hierarchy or other relationships among data.

Merge cells   Create cells that exceed one row or column, great for adding titles or notes to worksheets, or for table layout. It’s also useful for creating forms.

Work with Your Group

Internet features   You can add hyperlinks to cells or objects, or to documents created in other Office 97 applications. In Microsoft Excel 97 for Windows, you can open and save documents stored in FTP sites on the Internet. With a few mouse clicks, Microsoft Excel 97 will save your workbook in HTML format for use on the Web.

Validate data   You can set up rules for cell contents so that only certain values can be entered, and you can create input and error messages to help users enter correct values. Data validation cells can also be verified by using a button on the Auditing toolbar.

Shared workbooks   Microsoft Excel 97 makes it easy for multiple users to work on one workbook simultaneously. Users can highlight their changes right on the sheet making them easily visible. Attach comments to any cell to communicate with co-workers about changes. Keep track of all changes made to the workbook; identify changes to particular cells by the person who made the changes or by the time. In addition, users can each contribute to a workbook and not merge changes until everyone is finished.

Analyze Your Data

Improved charting   The Chart Wizard in Microsoft Excel 97 is redesigned to allow you to create and modify your charts easily. In addition, Chart Tips provide you with immediate information about a specific chart element, and the Office Assistant can provide step-by-step advice.

New Chart types   Microsoft Excel 97 offers new 3-D charts—pyramid, conical, and cylindrical—and a new bubble chart to make data presentation clearer and more precise.

PivotTable format enhancements   You can now format your PivotTable data and it will remain intact as you change the PivotTable or refresh the data. New PivotTable options enable you to position page fields across columns, show row items with no data, and control the appearance of empty cells or cells containing errors.

Calculate fields in PivotTables   Calculate fields or items within your PivotTable. The calculations become a part of the PivotTable, from which you can model data or analyze it.

PivotTable enhancements for advanced users   Advanced users can now sort row field items based on data in the PivotTable, increase the security of the data by using new PivotTable properties and methods, dynamically sort or hide items based on values in the PivotTable, and format or sort date fields.

Microsoft Map   New in Office 95, Microsoft Map allows you to show your data, such as sales by region or population, geographically.