microsoft excel 2011 for mac data analysis

There are literally hundreds of improvements, some very noticeable, others not quite as much so.

The big news for power users is the return of macro support (more on that later), but theres good stuff to be found for Excel users of all levels.

Some uneven performance issues and a lack of Mac-standard features, however, prevent this version from Excel from attaining perfection.

Excel 2011 looks much different than its 2004 and 2008 predecessors.

Gone are the numerous floating toolbars and the floating formatting palette.

Excel 2011 replaces all of those floating bits with two toolbars (standard and formatting) and the Ribbon, a collection of small tabs that provide easy access to often-used commands.

You can customize the Ribbon, or even disable it if you wish.

Its context sensitive, so it changes to match the task at hand.

For example, if you double-click an image, the Ribbon will open to a greatly improved set of image-editing commands.

The Ribbon and toolbars are now integrated in each Excel window, so theres nothing floating around outside your workspace.

A couple of optional floating windows remain, but theyre not required in most typical spreadsheet work.

The Ribbons tabs are compact, and the Ribbon itself can collapse to a single row of tabs when not in use.

As a result, the new Excels work area doesnt feel smaller than that of the older versions.

With the interface now contained in a single window, working with multiple workbooks at once is simpler.

For example, you previously couldnt compare formulas between workbooks, because the formula bar existed only once for every open workbook.

Drag-resizing a window now updates it in real time, instead of merely dragging an outline.

SmartArt has over 150 pre-made templates (up from 80-ish), all of which you can customize.

A media browser provides fast access to photos, audio, movies, clip art, symbols, and shapes.

There is some lag when you live-resize windows, even on current hardware, but the delay is bearable.

UI overhaul: Excels new all-in-one-window interface with the Chart ribbon open.

Beyond the visual overhaul, Excel 2011 provides many new or improved ways of working with spreadsheets and the data they hold.

Right up front, youll notice a new Workbook Gallery (similar to the Template Choose feature in Numbers 09 ) that appears when you launch the application.

Although it doesnt contain a ton of stock templates, you can browse a huge online template collection directly from the gallery window.

One of Excel 2011s innovative new features is sparklines, which are simply graphs of data values that appear within a single cell.

Microsoft Excel 2011 For Mac Data Analysis