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Moving on from Excel 2003

Jack

Jack

Member
Hi all

My work understandibly is stuck in Office 2003 mode, it does the job and you all know the rest. But I would like to move on to 2007 or 2010 as more and more blogs are leaving 2003 behind. I thought I could do this but limit set the saving to 2003 in compatibility mode. But this may cause a lot of rework for me re colours and formatting. I can easily enough avoid the new functions and not go beyond 3 conditional formats. What is the experience of others in this situation, is it worth operating in 2010 (I am assuming I may as well upgrade all the way to 2010) but ensuring all work related files are saved as 2003? I use VBA a lot so is this a problem writing VBA in 2010 and saving as 2003?
 
Surely, you need to do your analysis.


What does 2010 do that 2003 doesn't do (and be realistic, aside from a the bling, 2003 still does 99% of the job). Then once you know what 2010 offers, critically analyse which of those you need (NEED, not want), and those that might be useful even if you cannot yet see why. Then you need to do a proper assessment of whether the new stuff is worth the learning curve, the disruption, the cost, etc., etc.


Sure, 2010 looks good at first sight, but there are many faults with it. Far too much effort has been expended on added unnecessary glitz and visual trickery, far too little on improving the core product.


I have 2010, and mainly use it, but this is because most of my customers have migrated. If I were using it for my business instead of it being my business, would I upgrade? Debatable. I detest conditional formatting in 2010 (more than 3, great, the implementation and stupid cartoon graphics, far from great). I have never used sparklines, and the extra formulas were a great disappointment (no 3D formulae). Tables are good (not yet great) and an improvement on lists in 2003; I personally like manipulating the ribbon but again the ribbon is a poor implementation (its context switching is an annoyance); NameManager was just a waste (there is a better one out there for free); pivots are improved in many ways and I like slicers; VBA has a few new objects and was rewritten for 64 bit (although it is a brave soul who uses 64 bit Office); PowerPivot is great (2010 only, and no API); and so on.


The choice is yours.
 
I am using 2007. Think of it as your favorite restaurant having a facelift/remodelling. There is a few tweaks here and there. Thank god all the chefs are still there. So the food taste almost the same with some ups and downs. And the layout/design is...oh well, subjective. I find it a winding road going to where I want to go to, namely the toilet. ;)
 
The actual question I see here is that will there be any loss of data or functionalities or code from the already present 2003 format excel files........ If this is the question... the answer is the office 2007 and 2010 supports the 2003 format data very well.... You might face some difference in cell color other than that its fine....
 
BTW, seeing fred mention that he has 2007. 2010 is a vast improvement upon 2007, if you have the choice and you do decide to upgrade, give 2007 a wide berth.
 
Hi xld and Fred thanks for the comments and xld I agree with you there is not much advantage and creative workarounds solve most gaps in 2003. But one of the main things I was interested in is if anyone is using 2010/2007 but saving all work related workbooks as 2003 because of their work environments and is this causing problems in VBA or in having to redo formatting with funy colours coming through.

Cheers and thanks
 
I'll let others to comment on VBA. I did, however, encounter one macro issue to the point where I have to redo the workbook from scratch.


When it comes to colors. Yes, it does affect the color choice. I have used 2003 since it was debuted. And many if not all the colors of my choice have gone different.
 
Just chiming in a little about the VBA issue. In VB, code uses "references" which are basically libraries of objects/methods/etc. In 2007 & later, the default library went through several small, but key changes. Some good (suport 64 bit) and some bad. I recently ran into an issue where code I had written in 2003 no longer runs in 2007 because I was using a method that is no longer supported.


So, the warning is, be careful with what you write. Just like how some formulas in 2007/2010 (SUMIFS, COUNTIFS) won't work in 2003, there's some new things in 2007/2010 VB that won't work in 2003, and some stuff from 2003 that won't work in 2007/2010.
 
Hi Luke thanks for this. Do you recall what the VBA error message actually is when get an error due to an unsupported method?
 
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