Office 2010 Technical Preview: A SuperSite Special Report
Part 5: Microsoft Excel 2010

As with Word, Microsoft Excel is a mature and capable application, and a workhorse that is used by hundreds of millions of people every day. So as with Word, the changes to Excel 2010 are evolutionary and largely revolve around fine-tuning the data visualization capabilities of the application. And in keeping with other Office 2010 applications, Excel 2010 picks up a refined ribbon, of course, as well Office server integration--in this case via both SharePoint 2010 and Excel 2010 Services--and even live, multi-user co-authoring capabilities. But ultimately, Excel is all about crunching numbers and then providing attractive and useful visualizations that communicate the meaning behind that data. And in this core functionality, Excel 2010 does not disappoint.

64-bit support

Unlike with Windows, Microsoft will not sell separate 32-bit and 64-bit versions of Office 2010. Instead, the company will allow users to choose between 32-bit and 64-bit versions of Office 2010 during install. With most Office applications, you won't notice any real difference by going 64-bit. But with Microsoft Excel 2010, there are some obvious and important advantages, including the ability to create and use multi-gigabyte spreadsheets--over 4 GB, the limitation in 32-bit versions of Excel--as well as massive, memory-intensive datasets.

Sparklines

In our recent briefing about Office 2010, Microsoft noted some of the innovations that appeared first in Excel over the years, including its 3D chart effects in 1990 and the revamped chart engine that appeared in Office 2007. In Excel 2010, its further improving Excel's support for charts with a new feature called Sparklines, which are essentially tiny charts that appear within a single spreadsheet cell, giving you at-a-glance access to trends. Essentially, Sparklines are a visual way to represent numbers, and they will typically be placed next to the textual data they represent, providing more impact.

Sparklines provide at-a-glance access to trend information.

Slicers

PivotTables provide Excel users with a way to summarize data in useful ways and then rotate, or pivot, the summary data so that you can dig deeper and answer specific questions. PivotTables are a key data analysis tool in Excel, but the processing of filtering the data in such a construct is often arduous. So Excel 2010 introduces a new feature, Slicers, which let you visually filter the data in a PivotTable and quickly extract exactly the data you're looking for. Slicers appear as separate objects on the spreadsheet and then can be moved around and resized like charts and graphs. Slicers are live--so as data changes in the underlying PivotTable, the Slicers are updated as well--and interactive, meaning that you can select filter fields on the fly.

And more...

Excel 2010 contains further refinements, of course. The application 's conditional formatting tools have been improved, and Microsoft is allowing Excel 2010 users to take advantage of a separate "Project Gemini" add-in to perform in-memory analytics of database-based data sets. Excel is also heading to the web as part of Office Web Applications, and a new version of the Windows Mobile-based application, Microsoft Excel 2010 Mobile, will appear in the future.

Continue with Part 6, Microsoft PowerPoint 2010...

--Paul Thurrott
June 30 - July 13, 2009

Special Report: Office 2010 Technical Preview

Part 1: Introduction
Part 2: Improving Office
Part 3: Outlook 2010
Part 4: Word 2010
Part 5: Excel 2010
Part 6: PowerPoint 2010
Part 7: But Wait, There's More

Related Reading:
Office 2010

Office 2010 Beta: Introduction
Office 2010 Beta: User Experiences
Office 2010 Beta Preview
Outlook PST: Open for Business
SharePoint 2010 Preview
OWA: Is It Enough?
Office Web Applications TP
Office 2010 Technical Preview
Office 2010 Tech Preview Screens
Office 2010 FAQ
Office 14 Web Apps Preview