Excel 2003 or 2007?

**Novice_704** · 10-04-2007, 10:29 PM

Experts,

I'm about to buy a new computer as my Pentium II 2.0 is slow as heck ..and of course old!

I'm getting a desktop that Vista Home Premium loaded with Office 2007.

I've read somewhere that Excel 2007 isn't all that great. I am getting better learning Excel 2003.

If I take the 2007 would it be completely different functions, codes for VBA?

If I do decide to stick with 2003, would that work with VISTA?

Thanks.

**Paul** · 10-05-2007, 02:22 AM

The main difference many users will see between Excel 2007 and 2003 is the user interface. I'll be the first to admit that the new interface will take a while to get used to - primarily remembering where all of the functions are now located on the various ribbon bars - but 2007 includes a number of improvements to functionality that might be beneficial. (New/improved worksheet functions, nearly unlimited conditional formatting & sorting, increased rows/columns, etc. I'm sure you can google and find others quite easily.)

In regards to VBA, code written to Excel 2003 should still work, but some areas may need updating, especially when using VBA to save/open/write Office2007 files. This is because of the new file formats (.xlsx, .xlsm, .docx, etc....)

**shg** · 10-05-2007, 02:34 AM

As a guy who has both 2003 and 2007 installed, I'd say learn on Excel 2003, and transition when 2007 SP2 is out, which will probably be sometime after SP1 arrives. I use the other elements of the Office 2007 suite, but truly dislike the interface; I find it requires much switching between tabs, especially when editing documents.

If you're developing Excel applications that need to work in multiple versions, then you absolutely should develop in the lowest version for which the app will be deployed, avoid the things that flat didn't make it to Excel 2007, like the FileSearch method, and forego the cosmetic enhancements if they would be a significant element of the user interface to the spreadsheet.

**downforce** · 10-05-2007, 02:54 AM

Just did a quick google and found these two articles

Office Excel 2007 features that are not supported in earlier versions of Excel

Excel 97-2003 features that are not supported in Office Excel 2007

**starguy** · 10-05-2007, 03:00 AM

I think users should try to switch to Excel 2007 as it has lot more functionalities and enhanced features which may be needed to the user in future. So far as new interface is concerned, user really face difficulty to find the commands and options which they frequently and swiftly used in Excel 2003.
They can cope this problem by downloading an Excel file provided by Microsoft which refers Excel 2007 commands to Excel 2003 and you can easily locate the commands and options in Excel 2007 by referring to that workbook.
Here is the link you can download that file from, named "Excel Ribbon mapping workbook"

http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/ex...860481033.aspx

For new learners, they should start with Excel 2007 as it would prevail in market in near future as users may switch to Excel 2007 due to the enhanced features.