Microsoft Office 2011, to be released in October

Good news for all Excel users on Mac, the latest version of Excel will be out by the end of October 2011.

Pricing is also very competitive, with the office suite starting at only $119 for Home/Students.

Office will be available in 32bit only, so unfortunately Excel will not have a 64bit version for heavy excel users, and will be available from launch in 13 languages; Danish, Dutch, English, Finnish, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Norwegian, Spanish and Swedish, and two new languages Polish & Russian.

Hopefully Excel 2011, will give a usable alternative to the aging Excel 2004, and should provide extra stability & support for larger data that 2004 was missing, and give the necessary support for VBA that was missing in Excel 2008.

New Office 2011 Video from Microsoft

 Microsoft has posted a new video for Office for Mac 2011, which will of course include Excel for Mac 2011.

It's not a particularly enlightening video, as it mostly highlights 'templates', which the majority of business users have no use for & the dreaded ribbon. I'd say the vast majority of 'heavy' users prefer the traditional menu bar that was in Excel 2004 for Mac, rather than the 'bloated' ribbons of 2008, and probably 2011.

However, here's the video for your information;




http://www.officeformac.com/blog/Office-for-Mac-2011-Behind-the-Scenes--Conversations--Templates-and-more

Feature: Best 'Add-ins' for Excel for Mac 2004 #1

One of the most frustrating elements of using Excel on a Mac, is the support for 'Add-ins' are limited. The majority use a windows framework, and therefore do not work on a Mac.

However there are several essential 'Add-ins' that are compatible using Excel 2004.

Over the next couple of weeks, I will review some of my favourites starting with...

Mac Excel Expander
Website: http://www.vonixx.com/products/mee_index.htm
Download: http://www.vonixx.com/download/Mac_Excel_Expander.zip
Developer:  Edward Tam

This occupies the rare category of Mac specific Excel 'Add-ins', it's specifically built for the platform.

It's also 'freeware', unlike it's windows equivalent which costs $55 USD.

As the name suggests, the add-in adds a new menu item, where all features can be easily accessed.

It also adds a new taskbar featuring some of it's most commonly used features as illustrated above.

Key features that I use most include; the ability to hide/unhide multiple sheets with a single click, these are entitled 'Power-Hide' & 'Anti-Stealth', and are found under, 'Expander' -> 'Workbooks Management' -> Sheets Visibility' as shown below;

Or, on the Mac Expander task bar, by the following icons [1st is 'Power-Hide', 2nd is 'Anti-stealth']

Very useful, if you quickly need to access, multiple hidden sheets, without the need to unhide each sheet manually.

'Force Convert to Values' is also a very useful feature, especially since exporting data from some financial systems are converted to text, and this function allows for a one button quick fix to force concert all selected cells to numbers. You can access this feature as illustrated.

Excel for Mac 2011

One of the golden questions when it comes to using a Mac, is when the next version of excel will be coming out, and when will we finally get back the ability to use VBA again.

Well the wait should not be too much longer, as a recent post at Mac Mojo, the official Microsoft blog for Mac products, has recently announced Office for Mac 2011.

Microsoft has redesigned the  Mac navigation Ribbon, it's now been made slimmer, which hopefully will address the 'bloating' of the toolbar in Excel 2008.

The full post can be found article can be found in the link below,

http://www.officeformac.com/blog/Welcome-to-the-new-Office-2011-User-Experience

Hopefully Microsoft will release a Beta, like they have for Excel 2010 for Windows, I'll try to do a full review of the Beta if it does become available.

Edit Formula in Cell: F2 Alternative

One of a useful shortcuts in Excel on Windows, is the ability to enter a cell's formula with a keyboard
shortcut rather than using you mouse to point to the formula bar.
 
This shortcut was F2 in a PC, but in Excel for Mac it turns into Ctrl + U.  Unfortunately not the most effective shortcut, as it's rather difficult to press Ctrl + U with one hand on most keyboards.

Thanks to Edgar for this question.

Windows Shortcut: F2

Mac Shortcut: Ctrl + U

Shortcut to Access Visual Basic Editor

Now I have admit, that I am still using Excel 2004 for Mac, instead of 2008. Principally because i require the use of macros for my work. Thankfully Microsoft has got the message that VBA is an essential part of Excel and will hopefully be reintroducing it in the new version of Excel for Mac which will hopefully be released by the end of the year, or at latest early next year.

Back to the topic, when I was using a PC for Mac, I'd often used Alt+F11 to access the Visual Basic Editor, but because function keys are used for a different purpose on a Mac, it didn't work when I tried on Excel 2004 for Mac. However after some testing I finally manged to find the shortcut, which is listed below:

Windows Shortcut: Alt + F11

Mac Shortcut: Alt + Fn +F11

Cell Reference Lock: F4 Alternative

One of the first major problem that I faced when I first began using Excel on a Mac, was the appropriate shortcut replacement for F4, which adds $ signs to cell references to lock cell/range references from moving if dragged to another cell. After a great deal of frustration, and after trawling a number of excel forums I eventually found the solution which is shown below.

Windows Shortcut: F4

Mac Shortcut : Cmd + T