New blog on Excel '12'
David Gainer has started a blog discussing the next version of Excel. David is the GPM of the Excel team, and this should be a great blog for those of you interested in Excel. https://blogs.msdn.com/excel
In David's first post, he talks about an old limitation in Excel that is being increased. Because of the move to the new file formats, Excel is now able to increase the limit on the number of rows & columns that can exist in a spreadsheet. While the goals and reasons for moving to the new format weren't related to functionality like this, by moving to the new XML formats a whole new world of possibilities opened for us. Dave will discuss in future posts some of the other limitations that are changing. Here's a blurb from David's first post:
Probably the most common question the Excel team gets from our customers is “when are you going to add more rows/more columns/more rows and more columns”. There are many different scenarios behind these requests. Some customers want to be able to analyze more data than Excel has rows, some customers want to track more daily information than Excel has columns, and other customers want to perform matrix math on large matrices of thousands of elements. There are plenty of other scenarios too. Well, the answer to the question is “in Excel 12.” Specifically, the Excel 12 grid will be 1,048,576 rows by 16,384 columns. That’s 1,500% more rows and 6,300% more columns than in Excel 2003, and for those of you that are curious, columns now end at XFD instead of IV.
This is an exciting feature for us, because it is a feature that helps a very broad range of our customers, and we are looking forward to seeing what folks create with a bigger grid.
Of course, rows and columns aren’t the only things customers have been asking for more of. Next time, I will review all of the other places where Excel 12 gives you “more”.
-Brian
Comments
- Anonymous
September 23, 2005
So you are breaking Excel forever now. Older versions won't be able to read the new file format with full-fidelity. That contradicts what you said a couple of months ago.
great job! - Anonymous
September 23, 2005
Anon, in every version new features are introduced that may not work in prior versions. If that weren't the case, there would be no innovation.
Just to be absolutely clear here, older versions can absolutely read the files as long as there aren't more rows & columns than that version supports. But if you happen to use this new added capability, then yes, that won't be readable. We've actually done a ton of work to report to people if they are using something that might not work in a previous version so if that's a concern people can avoid it.
What are you suggesting exactly? That we don't improve the product based on what customers are requesting?
-Brian - Anonymous
September 23, 2005
Great news!
Thanks a lot Brian
Stefano - Anonymous
September 23, 2005
"What are you suggesting exactly? That we don't improve the product based on what customers are requesting?"
Of course customers have been asking for this for moren than a decade, just like they have been asking to be able to store unlimited content in a single cell. And that makes so much sense to be able to store 64k or more of content in a single cell right?
There is may be a problem. May be it's actually about giving proper tools to users. In this case pivot tables or other analysis tools help -- but users barely know those tools exist --.
If you are about to break Excel, then make more changes. One of the things you should fix is the color palette. Allow free 32-bit color, not the 1980ish 56 color anymore. Allow to add objects within cells, like pictures. Also, increase the size of range definition string limits (more than 32K). Increase just about anything. - Anonymous
September 23, 2005
Since you are setting yourself for a big big big $migration$ nightmare, please don't call this Excel anymore. Call it Excel+ or Excel Vista, or YourNextExcel. But it's not Excel anymore.
I expect more breaking changes like this anyway. What is the dependency with Avalon graphics by the way? There is some blogs out there saying that Office 12 requires WinFX. And is an opportunity for shapes to be described and rendered with Avalon.
Ironically enough this announcement comes a few days after Massachussetts showed you the finger. I am pretty sure that you didn't want to announce that you would break Excel when Massachussets was still discussing whether or not MS Excel file formats would last two decades or more.
You're showing your true intentions... - Anonymous
September 24, 2005
The comment has been removed - Anonymous
September 26, 2005
Anon,
Check out Dave's second post for some of the other limits that Excel 12 rolls back.
http://blogs.msdn.com/excel/archive/2005/09/26/474258.aspx
Charlie - Anonymous
September 27, 2005
Brian-
Thanks for the link to David's blog,and for your earlier link to Jensen's UI blog. How about getting one of PowerPoint team to start as well? I know that they aren't on the campus, but surely you can apply some pressure. Shawn V. perhaps? - Anonymous
September 28, 2005
Hey Gene, I'll talk to them and see what we can get. :-) - Anonymous
October 01, 2005
The comment has been removed - Anonymous
October 04, 2005
The comment has been removed - Anonymous
October 05, 2005
The comment has been removed - Anonymous
October 12, 2005
The comment has been removed - Anonymous
October 19, 2005
I teaching auditing at my college and do a fair amount of outside work with the internal and external auditing community. This row increase is the best news that I've had for a long time. For years now auditors have used Excel when the auditee's data set had fewer than 65,536 records and for larger data sets they either used (a) nothing, or (b) specialized audit software (Access, IDEA, ACL). This row increase will promote efficiency in that auditors will be able to analyze large data sets in the format that they are most familiar with. - Anonymous
October 19, 2005
Hey Mark, thanks for the comments. It's definitely something we've had people request for awhile now. We had been limited by the architecture of the existing binary formats, but now with the move to XML we can increase this limit which is great!
-Brian - Anonymous
November 16, 2005
will I ever receive an answer?
arno - Anonymous
February 21, 2006
Will ADO be supported in the new version? Please, please say "Yes"!
Otherwise, I have my work cut out for me...