Microsoft Office Excel 2007 Frequently Asked Questions

Office Excel 2007 helps people to analyze information and gain insight to make more informed decisions. Office Excel 2007 delivers a new, results-oriented interface that presents the relevant tools you need when you need them. With PivotTable views that are much easier to assemble, Office Excel 2007 brings powerful tools you need to organize and understand your data. Discern key trends at a glance by applying conditional formatting that helps you visualize patterns graphically. Communicate your analysis in professional-looking charts that contain stunning effects like transparency, 3-D, and anti-aliasing.

Office Excel 2007 is for people who need to organize large amounts of information and then analyze the data to make more informed decisions. Office Excel 2007 can accommodate massive data sets and enables you to apply conditional formats to better understand trends or find exceptions within the data. Other advanced tools, like PivotTable views, are now more accessible. You can create a PivotTable to quickly organize and better understand your information. Creating charts in Office Excel 2007 has been completely re-designed—it’s easier to create beautiful charts using improved charting tools.

Teams and organizations will enjoy many benefits when they use Office Excel 2007, including sharing spreadsheets more easily with other users by converting their spreadsheets to Portable Document Format file (PDF) or XML Paper Specification (XPS).

When you need to share your analysis with others in report format, Office Excel 2007 will help you to assemble this report more quickly and easily than ever before. Office Excel 2007 includes Cell Styles that preview different formats and enable you to quickly change the look of your report, so you can share your best work.

Additionally, Office Excel 2007 can be used in conjunction with Excel Services, a new server technology that will be shipped with the 2007 release of the Microsoft Office system. Excel Services provides server-side Excel spreadsheet calculation, browser rendering, and Web services interfaces. Excel Services supports many scenarios allowing teams and organizations to:

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Microsoft Works is targeted at home users who want a basic, task-based tool. The Works suite includes templates designed for personal use, such as cards, invitations, flyers, and home budgets. In contrast, Microsoft Office offers productivity and collaboration tools for use in businesses and home offices. Learn more about Microsoft Works products.

Purchasing options will be announced in the second half of 2006.

Yes. Find packaging information on the 2007 Microsoft Office Packaging page.

See the system requirements for Office Excel 2007.

Office Excel 2007 introduces the Microsoft Office Excel XML Format, a compact, robust file format enabling improved integration with external data sources and systems. The Excel XML Format is compatible with Microsoft Office 2003, Office XP, and Office 2000 with the addition of a file format converter patch, available from Microsoft Office Online and Microsoft Update. Users of Office 2003, Office XP, and Office 2000 can open, edit, and save files using the new Excel XML Format.

Office Excel 2007 also introduces a new binary file format. It is a full-fidelity file format just like the Microsoft Office Open XML Formats. It is based on the same technologies as the Office Open XML Formats. While the Office XML Formats contain parts with XML content, a Binary Workbook contains parts with binary content. Using the Office XML Format converters, Excel 2003, Excel 2002, and Excel 2000 can open and save Excel Binary Workbooks.

Office Excel 2007 introduces a new file format that addresses a number of important issues. File sizes for documents stored in this new format are significantly smaller than the Microsoft Office 2003, Office XP, Office 2000, and Office 97 file formats (.doc, .dot). Because of the way that data is stored within the documents, the recovery of corrupt or damaged files is vastly improved. Additionally, because the file format is XML-based, with an open, royalty-free license, developers can more easily build solutions that utilize Office Excel 2007 document contents and metadata.

Excel Services is a new server technology that will be shipped with the 2007 release of the Microsoft Office system. Excel Services provides server-side Excel spreadsheet calculation, browser rendering, and Web services interfaces.

Excel Services is a SharePoint-based technology that requires Windows SharePoint Services and Office SharePoint Server 2007 in order to function.

When combined with Excel Services, Office Excel 2007 will help users:

Excel Services requires Office Excel 2007 to author and publish spreadsheets.

Windows Server 2003 is the foundation for an integrated infrastructure. By adding the power of smart clients and collaborative servers, you get easier, more secure and reliable access to your own and shared information, including team documents.

For example, Windows Server 2003 and Windows SharePoint Services together can help people work together through team collaboration sites. Similarly, Microsoft Windows Rights Management Services (RMS) for Windows Server 2003 helps you to implement information rights management (IRM) technologies introduced in the 2007 release of the Microsoft Office system. IRM can help prevent sensitive documents and e-mail messages from being forwarded, edited, or copied by unauthorized individuals.